


Little Murder in the Big Woods

by Anonymous



Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: Also Successful Murders, Attempted Murder, Camping, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Only One Bed, Protective Shawn Spencer, Young Shawn Spencer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:47:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22679701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A totally harmless lie gets Shawn involved with Gus' work retreat... and MURDER.To be fair, he'd probably be getting a front row seat to a murder somewhere whether or not he decided to pose as Gus' live-in partner in order to spend a weekend camping trip distracting him from team-building exercises.
Relationships: Burton "Gus" Guster/Shawn Spencer
Comments: 32
Kudos: 208
Collections: Anonymous





	1. "What's a murderer doing camping?"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DictionaryWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/gifts).



> Going to be trying to get short chapters up with speed and regularity, as much as my schedule allows!

“But bears can climb trees,” Gus said skeptically, arms folded across his chest as he watched Henry haul their food supply up out of reach. Granted, they were camping out near Idyllwild and the only bears were black bears, which books and adults alike had assured him were more afraid of people than he was of bears, and could easily be scared off by waving your arms over your head and making a lot of noise, but that didn’t mean he had to be a dummy-- if food attracted bears and bears climbed trees, food in trees didn’t seem like a slam dunk plan to keep bears away.

“The bears aren’t going to be climbing up the tree and then making a leap for a garbage bag full of vienna sausages and marshmallows,” Henry sighed. 

“I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I know about that. Now come on, you boys are going to learn to dig a latrine.”

“Dad, there’s a bathroom right over there.” Shawn pointed it out, just a slight whine creeping into his voice. Even through the trees, the sign was clearly visible, and there was a lightpost to make it easy to find after dark. 

“You’re going to learn anyway.”

“Can we learn how to dig a tiger trap?” Shawn asked.

“No you may not.”

“Can we learn how to make a fire with just two sticks?” Gus asked.

“I will teach you how to make a bow drill,” Henry said with a nod. He then paused. “Gus, how do your parents feel about you using a knife?”

“I don’t think they’d mind.”

Henry stared him down a moment, before nodding again, satisfied. Despite Shawn’s mutinous mutterings about the merits of tiger traps over latrines, the digging went well enough. He didn’t think they should have to learn, given the readily available bathroom, but then, he had to admit there weren’t exactly a lot of tigers in Idyllwild. What there _were_ , were various endangered animals which the park rangers would _not_ like to find in a twelve year old boy’s tiger trap. 

“--and Shawn, I don’t want you boys using that bathroom alone in the middle of the night, so if you don’t want to use these latrines, you can wake me up--”

“Why can’t we go to the bathroom? It’s just like the one in the park.”

“Exactly, and sometimes there are junkies and murderers in the bathroom in the park,” Henry said, with an air of triumph which neither boy felt was particularly deserved.

“There are murderers in the bathroom?” Shawn raised an eyebrow.

“Murderers have to use bathrooms, too.”

“What’s a murderer doing camping?”

“Hiding from the police, in the woods. Now, I want you to tell me what to do if you get lost.”

“Get caught by a murderer, I guess,” He whispered to Gus, grinning when it earned him a stifled laugh. With a put-upon sigh, he launched into a rundown of how to determine direction, read a map, mark a trail, and find someone else’s trail. Wilderness trivia, Shawn knows, is this weekend’s key to unlocking pocketknife privileges and s’mores alike, and even if he can’t use said pocketknife to sharpen sticks to put in a pit to trap not-a-tiger, well… there’ll still be cool things he _can_ do.

-

“I need you to take Shawn this weekend,” Juliet says, rather abruptly, as she pulls Gus aside.

“I’m sorry, do we have joint custody of Shawn now?”

“It’s just… Lassiter has this thing, and-- I mean he doesn’t even want to talk to me about it, but whatever he’s expecting is _important_ , and Shawn is… _Shawn_ , and I just don’t want to deal with another incident like last month. Did you know there has to be a report filed for every bullet fired?”

“So Lassiter writes a lot of reports, huh?”

“Well, I write some of them. So can you please take Shawn… anywhere? Away from here?”

“No can do. I am on a work team retreat, for my real job. I will be in a yurt all weekend, learning the names of people from payroll that I’m never going to talk to again in my life.”

“And you can’t take Shawn with you?” Her forehead crinkles up in a silent plea.

“I cannot. Anyway, even if I could, do you really think he’d rather go on a camping trip with a bunch of guys in pharmaceutical sales, or mess up Lassiter’s life? Yeah.”

It stops her for a minute, though even when he turns and walks away, she calls after him. He doesn’t stop, he is not going to stop. He has a Shawn-free weekend to look forward to. No crimes, no schemes, no ridiculous aliases, no goofing around, just… just a normal work retreat. Even if he wanted to take Shawn-- and he doesn’t-- he wouldn’t be able to. No, a weekend of relaxation in the open air, with nice, normal people. Normal, boring people he doesn’t know.

No. No, he is absolutely not wavering on this. Okay, yes, a lot of people from work will be boring, and he doesn’t need to learn about Carol-from-payroll’s grandchildren in order to be a good team member. But, _but_! Alyssa from accounting is going to be there. So it’s definitely not going to be boring. And he _definitely_ doesn’t need Shawn getting involved.

Gus knows Shawn well enough not to underestimate him when it comes to deviousness and general trouble. Juliet, on the other hand, is a little easier to underestimate, when deviousness is involved. He’s feeling safe once he’s clear of her, he’s feeling safe right until he gets the call confirming that he’s bringing a live-in partner with him on the retreat.

“Hey, so we’re camping?” Shawn greets him, as he barrels into the office.

“You are not my live-in partner, Shawn.”

“Well… we are partners,” Shawn spreads his hands, gesturing at the office around them. “And for legal reasons, if anyone asks, I ‘live’ with you.”

“Oh, no.”

“It’ll be fun!”

“Don’t ruin this for me, Shawn! I _told_ you about Alyssa from accounting. She’s going to be there.”

“And you want to impress her.” Shawn nods sagely. “I got it, I get it, I can help you.”

“You showing up as my live-in partner isn’t going to help me get a date.”

“We’ll break up in front of her. You’ll be the good guy, I’ll be the bad guy. We’ll make it work.”

“Did Juliet put you up to this?”

Shawn mimes locking his lips shut, which is pretty rich coming from him, but Gus lets it go with a sigh. Juliet had managed to get to Shawn in time, to keep him from finding out about any of Lassiter’s plans or expectations for the weekend-- her plan had been simple. Knowing Gus had a camping trip, all she really had to do was insinuate that Gus had plans he didn’t want Shawn involved with and trust Shawn’s contrariness to do the rest. Shawn, for his part, played into the whole thing happily. He couldn’t invite himself along on a work retreat as Gus’ friend… but a harmless little lie about the nature of their relationship, and they _had_ to make accommodations. 

Well, he supposes they didn’t _have_ to, but the push for inclusivity being what it is, and the chances of getting hit with a discrimination lawsuit because Karen was allowed to bring her husband or some such thing… And he’s looking forward to it. Okay, he hadn’t realized there was actually going to be someone there Gus would want to talk to, he’d kind of imagined it would be like so many things in life, the two of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the sidelines making jokes for each other’s benefit, while other people played the game the way it was meant to be played.

Okay, okay, so he could feel bad about that, but he doesn’t. No, because he is going to be a good friend, and he is going to _help_. He’s going to be the human equivalent of a fifty-foot billboard listing all of Burton Guster’s most dateable qualities. And then, he’s going to let him go. Going to ‘break up’ with him in front of this Alyssa woman, make sure she knows Gus swings her way, too. Well, not ‘too’, maybe, but… well, she’ll think it’s ‘too’, it doesn’t matter. What matters is, Shawn is an excellent wingman and an excellent friend. Gus should be glad to have him, really.

Shawn finds the campsite itself disappointing, when they arrive-- though if he can say one thing for it, he’s been on longer drives to get to someplace with trees before. It’s not real camping, that’s the thing, it’s fancy, there are yurts. They aren’t allowed to build fires outside of the designated fire pits-- which aren’t even actual pits, they’re just big shallow braziers you can roast marshmallows over. Highly disappointing. He’d packed _supplies_. He had a plan in place that relied pretty heavily on casting Gus as an Expert Survivalist. 

Gus finds himself wincing through the introductions, as he checks in with his ‘live-in partner’ in tow, and has to endure the merging of his two worlds as people ask when he’s going to introduce them to Shawn. Shawn has adopted a character for the weekend-- he shakes Alyssa’s hand too enthusiastically and calls her ‘the famous Alyssa’.

The one saving grace for both of them, when they get to Gus’ yurt for the weekend, is the sight of a real, actual bed, with a real, actual mattress.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about…” Gus sighs, dropping his bag and rolling his shoulders. Plenty of room to spread out and relax…

“The yurt is winning me over with this bed…” Shawn nods.

“Oh, you’re not sleeping in my bed, Shawn.”

“What?”

“You packed a sleeping bag, use it.”

“I’m already on the couch. I see how it is.”

“You’re damn right. You invited yourself, this bed is mine all mine.”

“If I hadn’t invited myself, you’d be sleeping in a single bed. Or a bunk bed, sharing a yurt with someone else.”

Shawn is actually pretty sure none of the yurts would accommodate a bunk bed in any sensible way, but if Gus doesn’t know they don’t, then he’s not going to walk it back. He simply holds Gus’ challenging gaze until Gus finally breaks the unspoken staring contest with a huff. 

“You’re not sleeping in my bed,” He says.

“No, no, that’s good. Gotta establish that there’s trouble in paradise early.”

For a long moment, Gus just stares resolutely in the opposite direction-- long enough that Shawn starts to worry, just a little. Then, finally, he turns, expression softened.

“You are not sleeping in my bed,” He repeats. “But… it won’t be too bad to have someone to talk to that isn’t Fred Gisler. If I have to hear him talk about Gabapentin one more time…”

“The girl who got her braces stuck on that little vent in her locker door senior year?”

“Gabby Fenton, and you know that’s not what I meant.”

“I thought Gabby Fenton was the incomprehensible old prospector.”

“That’s Gabby Hayes.”

“The guy who tried to ban kissing in movies--”

“Shawn, I don’t have all day, I have team-building exercise,” Gus frowns. “Gabapentin treats restless leg syndrome.”

For lack of anything better to do, Shawn accompanies Gus to the orientation and team-building, sitting on the sidelines with a couple of actual spouses. He contemplates telling Fred’s wife Cheryl that he hasn’t quit smoking, like she’s so proud of him for doing, and contemplates telling a woman named Amy’s husband Brad that she’s having an affair with a coworker, but on both counts, he keeps his mouth shut. Maybe at the end of the whole retreat, after he and Gus have ‘broken up’ and just before they leave. Maybe never. Well, maybe just Brad, but he should try and figure out how to break it to him gently, he seems like a decent guy.

He’d gone into the weekend assuming Gus’ coworkers would be boring, and for the most part they do not disappoint. One of the older ladies from payroll is a hoot, though, and some guy named Gerry laughs at his jokes over lunch, which is more than he can say for most of this crowd. Alyssa seems nice, but she doesn’t have a great sense of humor. Still… she and Gus get into a side conversation about something, leaving Shawn to talk with Gerry. Still, there’s the rest of the afternoon for some free time. Some of the others are planning a hike, which isn’t normally how he’d choose to spend an afternoon, but it’s not his last choice, either. He’s not actually sure what his last choice would be, but he could probably figure it out over the course of the afternoon.

Gus feels less doom-and-gloom about things by dinner, having had more chances to talk with Alyssa over the day, right up until Carol fails to show up. Someone goes to fetch her, and then a scream echoes over the campground. 

“Oh, I’ve got a real bad feeling about _this_ ,” He frowns, casting a look over to Shawn. He can see the shift into mystery-solving mode, as the group all moves towards Carol’s yurt. The group is focused on the direction of the scream, and on trading speculation as to what could have happened to Carol, Shawn is already scanning every single one of Gus’ coworkers.

  
As for Carol… Gus is content _not_ to try and get closer. The hatchet by the entrance to her yurt and a white-faced supervisor curled into the fetal position a foot or so away is enough for him.


	2. Nobody Enjoys Work Retreats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shawn learns a little something about Carol and her murder, and maybe just a little something about himself.
> 
> Murderers lurking in restrooms remains a concern, if not a clear and present danger.

Gus gives Shawn a look which clearly reads ‘do not do the thing you are thinking about doing’, and Shawn chooses not to understand.

“Honey, you’ve helped the cops solve murders before, maybe you should step up and help handle this situation,” Shawn says, in just about the worst stage whisper Gus has ever heard.

“I am not poking around any dead bodies, Shawn. _Not_ now.”

“Gus, you’ve helped solve a murder?” Alyssa asks, turning to him. She has an arm around Ken, who Gus has learned over the course of the morning is Carol’s best work friend, or possibly just best friend, from the way he’s sobbing. Calm, comforting, caring… really, a very sensible choice, as far as women he sees on a regular basis.

“Well, I mean, a little. I’ve been known to provide expert information when pertinent to a case.” 

Shawn nudges him, with a cough and a Look. 

“What? Oh-- Right! So… everybody should just stay calm, stay in a group, and I will put in a call to the chief. Get this all… taken care of. Jan, you’ve got everyone’s cell phones, right?”

While Gus has the group’s attention, Shawn takes in as much of the crime scene as he can without making himself obvious. The last thing they need is to get called out for creeping on a dead body. But there’s a lantern or a flashlight or something on inside the yurt, and he can see the spray of blood up the canvas siding, and the shadows of upturned and strewn objects, the body… and the head.

By the time they get into the little cabin at the heart of the campground, the whole group is accounted for-- minus Carol-- and nobody is covered in blood. Fred had been off on his own before reconvening for dinner, but he’d been smoking, no mystery there. About half the group had been on the hike and could therefore be ruled out as Shawn had had eyes on them for too much of the afternoon, the other half he’d have to figure out… 

Jan goes to the cupboard in the cabin with the lockbox full of cell phones. Or, as it happens, the cupboard in the cabin _without_ the lockbox full of cell phones.

“I vote we just go,” Amy says, grabbing onto her husband on her second try. 

“We can’t just go, we-- we have to give our statements to somebody.” 

“Who, Jan?”

Shawn nudges Gus again, mouths the word ‘radio’. When Gus doesn’t leap into action, he jerks his head towards a dusty desk in a dusty back corner. The radio there is likewise dusty, but it’s better than not-a-lockbox-full-of-cell-phones. Although, Gus would really like to get his phone back.

“What about the radio?” He asks, in what he hopes is a tone both self-assured and reassuring. The smile he flashes Alyssa is awkward at best, but when he turns back to Shawn, he gets a thumbs-up. 

“I’ll try the radio, then.” Jan nods and heads to the back corner. Everyone else mills around uselessly, as she dusts it off and tries to get it running, no one very hungry, occasional murmurs rising up from other pharmaceutical reps who would like to get their phones back also. Finally, Jan stands up, radio abandoned. “Can’t get through to the rangers’ station. What I think would be best is if we all group up and carpool down, and then let the rangers handle it. After we give our statements, we can get our things, get our cars, and head for home, but until the cops are here, let’s try and stay in groups.”

It’s a solid plan, but that doesn’t stop the whining over carpooling, over waiting around, over leaving their things and not knowing where their phones have gone. 

“Any one of you could be the murderer,” Fred’s wife says, raising her voice above the general grumble of the group. “I don’t want to ride in a car with a murderer!”

“Well, honey, you’re going to be in the same car as _me_ ,” Fred sighs, and gives the group a look as if to suggest that wives are all silly creatures, really, and that this is a normal conversation that all married people have. 

“That’s why we’re carpooling, so no one is in a car alone with a murderer,” Jan says. 

“And anyway, we were all together, until Carol went to go have a nap,” Fred continues. “We were all in groups. The murderer could just be some… crazy guy in the woods.”

“Murderers do _notoriously_ love camping…” Shawn muses, his expression a mockery of thoughtfulness which only falters at a glare from Gus. 

“Once we make it to the rangers’ station, everything is going to be fine.”

“Ken, you and Alyssa should come with us,” Shawn jumps in, as carpooling groups begin to form, people locking arms in little clumps of four or five. “Gus is an _excellent_ driver-- what? Honey, don’t be modest, come on. And you can tell me _all_ about Carol, it sounds like she was _such_ a special person.”

Ken nods, still sniffling loudly, and Shawn shoots Gus a look over him, as he’s passed off from Alyssa’s hold and into Shawn’s-- though it’s less a look that says ‘why am _I_ holding him?’ and more ‘ _this_ is Carol’s best friend?’-- and the four of them join the fearful procession towards the nearest parking area. 

“So you really think they’re going to send someone out here to catch the guy?” Alyssa whispers, holding onto Gus’ arm. He doesn’t attach any meaning to it-- it’s how everyone is moving in their groups, she thinks he’s with Shawn-- but he doesn’t think it would be wrong to enjoy it a little bit. Although, passing by the yurt where Carol’s body and head still are has dampened any feeling he might have had about it. 

“Oh, yeah, absolutely. Shawn and I know some people, I’m sure they’re going to get the guy.” He pats her hand. Possibly he shouldn’t have brought Shawn up, but the idea of creating distance between them now just to double down on lying to a girl he kind of sort of liked just seems less important when there’s been a murder. Reassuring her, sure. The concept of talking to her as two single people in the future, yes, maybe. The murder just keeps floating to the forefront. If they got married, they’d always remember the murder, probably. They’d have to name their firstborn Carol. 

“Come on, Ken, come on, buddy,” Shawn urges him along, one sobbing, shuffling step at a time. “We’re almost to the car. Hey, which one of these sweet rides is yours?”

“Su-Su-Subaru!” Ken wails, suddenly heavy in his arms. “I mean I don’t have a _car_ , I rode with _Carol_.”

“Aww, that’s okay, I got ya, come on… we’ll get you taken care of, don’t even worry. You’re gonna be okay.”

He knows it’s a lie about the time the words come out of his mouth, he can already pick out bits of the commotion up ahead as the first carpool groups reach the cars. A couple of shouts, someone crying, people frantically getting down on their hands and knees or racing between cars…

“Shawn, someone slashed my tires,” Gus says flatly. It’s the kind of flat Shawn knows, which means Gus isn’t at all calm, but things have gotten so bad that one more thing might as well happen, and he’s struggling with the urge to snap gnawing at the reins of the desire to remain dignified and collected in front of people he knows professionally.

“Someone slashed _all_ the tires!” One of the reps shouts.

“Not all of them, it can’t be all of them,” Fred argues, wrapping his jacket around his wife’s shoulders. “Right? Jan?”

“Everyone’s tires are slashed.”

“I mean a murderer wouldn’t slash his own tires. Unless the murderer is just a crazy guy living in the woods.”

Fred’s wife bursts into tears. 

“Honey! No, I didn’t-- Honey, look, we’re going to be _fine_. After we get home, we’ll take _your_ dream vacation, no camping. I promise.”

“Come on, everyone,” Jan sighs. “Let’s head back. It’s getting late and it’s going to get dark, we should try again to get the radio working. Is anyone here in IT?”

“I work with computers, Jan, not World War Two era radio equipment,” Ronnie-from-IT snarks, but when they do get back to the cabin, he still joins the group of people working to get the radio working.

Everyone else does their best to eat a little, and some people elect to roll out blankets on the cabin floor, while others bunk together in yurts. Shawn does his best to learn what he can about Carol from an exhausted and emotional Ken, but he’s mostly biding his time until everyone turns in for the night and he can get a look at the crime scene. 

“Don’t even think about it, Shawn,” Gus says, as he’s changing into pajamas and Shawn is going through his camping equipment looking for a lantern. “You’re gonna get caught and then you’re _gonna_ be a murder suspect.”

“Look, there’s going to be evidence that won’t exist by the time the cops get here! If this _wasn’t_ random, then her killer probably destroyed anything in her tent that could help us, but what about footprints?”

“What about footprints? Everyone’s already been stomping all over them already, we need to just sit tight.”

“Her car. The killer might not know which car is hers, if this is something targeted, if the killer is someone you work with--”

“Then why would anybody kill Carol? Shawn, you met her. She’s a woman in her fifties who loves dachshunds, coffee, and sweater sets. She signs people’s checks. Her best friend is a thirty year old man in a Hawaiian shirt your dad would wear.”

“Yeah, I was going to say, is that weird?”

“What, you think it’s, like, a Harold and Maude thing?” Gus climbs into bed. 

“ _Definitely_ not a Harold and Maude thing. But what are the odds that a maniac came out of the woods, picked _her_ yurt, and brutally murdered her, _without_ making enough noise to draw anyone’s attention? Most of us were out on the hike, but what about the people who hung back around the cabin to play, what, Uno? I mean, your buddy Fred took a lot of bathroom breaks this morning, but there’s no way he took a bathroom break long enough to murder a woman and then clean up after, without someone noticing. I got bored during trust falls and started timing him, those were pretty quick pee breaks. I don’t think Fred washes his hands.”

“Don’t _say_ that to me! Shawn! I am trying to sleep, okay?” Gus sits back up, slamming a hand down against the mattress for emphasis. “I’m not freaked out enough over the murder, now you gotta bring up hand-washing? Now I have to think about everything he touched that I touched after him… Does he just live like that? Does his wife know?”

“Cheryl? Doubt it. Cheryl, Carol, Carol, Cheryl… No, nothing there. But you said she signs the checks?”

“Go to _sleep_.”

“Could be about money. I’m gonna go check it out-- ooh, bright!”

Shawn, failing to adjust the brightness on his halogen bulb camping lantern, settles for throwing a shirt over it, so that the light is dimmed and directed downwards. He’s barely begun checking out different tracks when he hears Gus pulling on shoes and a jacket to follow him.

“If you get me murdered…” Gus says, though the threat dies out. He hangs onto Shawn’s arm, the two of them creeping back out towards the parking area. No use trying to determine anything with tracks there-- it’s not paved, just more dirt, bark bits, and pine needles, but the entire group walked all over. 

Shawn contemplates breaking into the car, but ultimately decides against it. Better to wait on that, he can just imagine having to explain to Lassiter why he’d needed to. 

“Can we go to bed now?” Gus hisses.

“I’ll walk you back.”

He needs to check out the yurt, as little as he’s looking forward to whatever’s going on with the body at this point. The smell is bad enough even giving it a wide berth. And poor Gus… No. No, he can’t check out the yurt, can he? Gus would kick him out of theirs if he came back with dead body smell soaked into the fibers of his clothing, Gus is sensitive like that. No, Ken is going to have to be the key to learning more about Carol.

It would be _very_ difficult for anyone who went on the hike to be involved in the murder. However, it could be two people… maybe? Somehow? Anyone could have taken the phones or slashed some tires, but only someone who wasn’t with the main group could have decapitated Carol. 

His brain is still buzzing over it when he and Gus get back to the yurt and settle down to sleep. Well, settle down to lie down in the dark, at least.

“I am not enjoying myself, Shawn,” Gus says, before Shawn can get very close to sleep at all. 

“Come on, Gus. Nobody enjoys work retreats.”

“I am being serious here, this is freaking me out. A murderer has my phone, and slashed my tires, and removed Carol’s head from her damn body. And don’t try and tell me we deal with this stuff all the time, because we don’t. He removed her head from her damn body!”

“Or she.”

“ _From her damn body_!” He hisses. “And we’re usually doing this with the cops around, okay, this is different. I’m freaking the freak out.”

Shawn gets up, kicking his way free of his sleeping bag and making his way to the bed in the dark. He doesn’t get under the cover, just lies down next to Gus, putting a hand on his shoulder. 

When he wakes, they’re both contorted awkwardly in a fight over the blankets, neither one of them tucked in in a satisfactory fashion, Shawn still mostly on top of the covers. But it’s kind of nice, kind of reminiscent of childhood. 

“Hey,” Shawn says, his hand returning to Gus’ shoulder as they straighten themselves out a little. “We’re gonna be okay.”

It’s something. It isn’t much, but it’s something. 

“I’m going to take care of this, okay, phase one of the plan is coming together, so don’t even worry,” He continues, over Gus’ protests, as the two of them dress. He scans the area as they exit the yurt, before he takes Gus by the elbow and hustles him over to the cabin for breakfast. 

It’s a subdued affair. Ken’s sleeping bag is in the corner, he wakes slowly to the sound of everyone else, the smell of eggs and coffee. He joins them when he’s a little more alert, and Shawn takes advantage, teasing out personal bits first in hopes of catching something relevant. Everyone comes over to check on him at one point or another, different people refilling his coffee or bringing him toast, or just stopping by for a hug. Ronnie and Pat from IT, as well as an older guy, are helping Jan with trying to get the radio working. Fred is avoiding the caffeine, which Shawn doesn’t blame him for. Fifty bathroom breaks because your English Breakfast tea goes right through you, when there’s a murderer on the loose, is not something you want to chance. For the women, at least, going as a group isn’t weird. Shawn is just glad he and Gus aren’t beholden to whatever standard of masculinity that says men should just risk being murdered rather than use the buddy system when going to the bathroom. 

Finally, finally, when Shawn slides in another softly astonished ‘how could anybody kill Carol?’, something in Ken seems to gel, a little light coming up behind his eyes. 

“Well, she did… _know_ something,” He says, brow furrowing as he tries to follow the thread. “It was right before the trip, she was reading something, and then she was on the phone, and I remember she made a note to herself, ‘call Lucy, Amy, Barb. Legal?’-- that’s Legal, question mark. Do you think that’s important, do you think I should remember that for the police?”

“I think you should, yeah,” Shawn nods. Lucy and Amy also worked on the financial side, which lent credence to the idea that this was something to do with money, but the only Barbara Shawn has met has been a secretary. A slightly dotty woman who shared Carol’s affinity for sweater sets, but did not seem like someone to trust with a financial conspiracy. Of course, she could be the key to reaching someone higher up the ladder, but he’d need to learn more. 

Then again, with the radio equipment overheating, Shawn thinks he’ll have plenty of time to learn more before anyone shows up. 

Since the radio has to sit and rest, Jan gathers people in for another team-building exercise. Shawn does his duty as wingman and talks Gus up a little more in front of Alyssa, while Jan organizes her team into teams, but Ken’s drained. It means he’s sitting back with Shawn and the spouses, but he’s given Shawn all the information he has, or at least everything he can think of for the moment, and he winds up slumping against Shawn’s shoulder. Under the circumstances, Shawn lets him.

People get some air in groups, after that, or refresh their coffee. Shawn and Gus head out by themselves, but discussing the details they do know doesn’t bring about a lightbulb moment. 

“I’m frustrated here, there’s something I’m not getting. There’s a problem with the pattern here. If I had Lassie to go get a look in the yurt then I could check things out after the body was moved out, while he was busy with other… stuff, I don’t know. I hate to call him useful, but I mean… what was Carol onto? What secrets does she have? And…”

Shawn straightens, spotting movement around the corner of the cabin, but it’s only Alyssa and Ronnie trying to guide Ken through taking a walk. Well… it’s not answers, but it’s the chance to make up for the monkey wrench he threw into Gus’ love life.

“Gus, this isn’t-- I’m not breaking _up_ with you,” He starts, in the tone he’s adopted for the Shawn Spencer that Gus’ coworkers know. “I mean, God knows you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m just saying… maybe when all this is over, we want to… re-evaluate.”

“Shawn, what are you--?” Gus starts, then stops, catching up-- though he very nearly turns around to look behind him. “What do you mean re-evaluate?”

“Look… I always thought we would be… I always thought we would be together forever. It all looked perfect on paper, didn’t it?” And he finds he doesn’t have to fake the lump in his throat, he doesn’t have to fake half of what he thought he would be faking. Well, there’s a little bit left to fake, as he paints the picture of Gus as a crimesolving daredevil, but aside from that, all he really has to do is… stop faking. “Two bi guys just looking to settle down with one special person, and my dad loves you, and-- But I’m scared, Gus. All this murder stuff, you being this… cool-headed action guy who knows about cop stuff, and… I mean, are you going to get into this stuff all the time? Am I going to be sitting at home worrying about my super-cool hero husband? What about the day someone calls home to say you’re in the hospital, but I can’t be with you in the hospital, because we’re not actually family?”

“Shawn, that’s not going to happen,” Gus squeezes his arm. He’s caught up to the fact that they’re laying the groundwork for his being single and available later, but he’s still struggling to figure out how to play his side of it. He can’t just not fight for his supposed relationship, obviously, but he hadn’t expected to be the one who’s cool, who lives on the edge. He’s too used to having the other side of the argument, telling Shawn to be careful, to rein it in, to be sensible and safe. More than that, he hadn’t expected Shawn to make things… _real_ , the way the talk of hospitals and family do.

Shawn is more his family than anyone else, Shawn and Henry Spencer are more his family than his own parents. He doesn’t think his parents would bar them from visiting him if he _was_ in the hospital, however little they might approve of Shawn for various sensible reasons. He just hadn’t wanted to think about that. He almost wishes Shawn’s whole speech was just stupid and silly and obvious and fake, would rather blow whatever shot he may have had with Alyssa completely by having the fake relationship exposed-- it’s not like he faked it for her benefit, it was just to get Shawn out of the city for a weekend anyway-- than to have to stand here and think about what would happen if one of them was seriously hurt, hospitalized. The fact that a woman was just brutally murdered yesterday evening has him as close to a panic attack as he really wants to get in front of people from work and now this. What if his parents didn’t let Shawn in to see him because they think of him as a lifelong bad influence? It’s not like it would matter, in the long run, not if it wasn’t _that_ serious, but still, the idea makes something hot and sharp beat its wings against the inside of his ribcage.

“It’s just a lot to handle! And I mean, I-- And it’s not _fair_ … it’s not fair of me to change you because of what I want, is it?” Shawn’s face falls, his lip even quivers. “I keep pushing you to do what I want, and I’m too selfish to even apologize right, because I’m _not_ sorry, I’m not sorry for a minute of the time I spend with you, doing my dumb shit that you didn’t ask for, but I should-- I should let you be you. I should let you fly free, like the beautiful butterfly that you are.”

“Woah, woah, _Shawn_ \--”

“You are… so sweet, and so patient, and so strong, and so… Do you know what?”

Gus doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t. He thought he did, for half a moment, and now he’s never known anything less.

“Do you know how I am always going to see you?” Shawn touches his cheek. “Do you remember our first couples’ Halloween costume?”

Gus remembers being kids, lying on the living room carpet watching and rewatching a battered VHS tape, the same two episodes on repeat, the obsession of a single rainy October, he remembers crafting costumes, assuring each other with wide, giddy grins that they looked as much like the characters as a pair of eleven or twelve year olds could… He also remembers that Henry had demanded Shawn give the idea up at the last minute because he did not think ‘private detective’ was a suitable costume any more than he would eventually think it was a suitable career choice. Though in real life, at least-- unlike that Halloween-- he didn’t think ‘hobo’ ranked above ‘P.I.’.

It was just as well. ‘Hobo’ was an old fashioned costume choice even then, if not wildly politically incorrect as it would be at present, but at least other kids knew what a hobo _was_ , and the same could not be said for private detectives from a TV show that went off the air in 1980. Shawn had declared it better than another year of having to dress up as a cop.

“Please don’t always see me like that,” Gus says, and Shawn laughs, laughs and leans into him, and it feels only natural to bring his arms up around him. 

“See? See, you’re… you are this guy that I am always going to love, because you could have done anything that Halloween, but you still dressed up with me, and you… You should get to have your life. Your own life, like… not dictated by every dumb plan I’ve ever made that didn’t work out.”

“I have my life. And they don’t always-- you don’t-- I still have my life, Shawn. Now that you’ve got me remembering that show, though, a lot of things about your adult life are falling into place…”

“I am going to take that as a compliment.”

Gus snorts. “We’ll talk about whatever you want to when all of this is done. Right now, can we just find the bathrooms without getting murdered?”

“We can try.”


	3. Dry, White Toast With Restless Leg Syndrome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The body count is rising, and Shawn is grappling with feelings... and with meeting another inveterate nicknamer.

It’s barely afternoon when Shawn and Gus find themselves once more in possession of an aimless and emotional Ken, Ronnie dumping him all but into Shawn’s lap with a look of mingled fondness and disgust. It’s a look Shawn knows well, though he’s usually on the receiving end.

“Get it together, Ken-doll, you’re a _mess_ ,” Ronnie tells him, though that too is softened by something warmer and friendlier than most of what Ronnie has said to Jan over the course of their attempts to fix the radio. “I’m going to go get my book. Keep this guy breathing?”

“Tall order around here, but okay. Ken, are you _swozzled_?” Shawn asks-- he doesn’t have to ask, Ken is one hundred percent blitzed, bombed, three sheets to the wind, over par, and whatever else people say when what they mean is dead drunk. 

“Gabrielle topped my coffee off with a little something-something,” Ken confides, waggling his empty cup in the air. Shawn takes the cup before Ken can drop it, passing it off to Gus to set to the side. Ken, for his part, starts snoring against Shawn’s shoulder. 

“Oh, he’s _drunk_ ,” Gus says, eyebrows making a valiant climb up towards his hairline. “Nobody here is named Gabrielle.”

“Is there a Gabrielle back at the office? Someone with a twin? Did I miss Gabrielle Union coming in? Did she have a cell phone?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, definitely not, and probably, but since she’s not here, that’s not helping anybody.”

“Damn. Then I have no one but ol’ Ken here with whom to nurse my inevitable heartbreak as our relationship falls apart over the course of this weekend.”

Gus decides that the real better part of valor is not examining why the idea of Ken soothing Shawn’s imaginary heartbreak is making him so upset. 

“You can’t rebound with Ken,” He says, in what he hopes is a reasonable tone. Gus is good at reasonable. “He dresses like your dad, Shawn, it would be weird.”

“Mm, yeah. Plus, he works with my ex and his new lady, that would be awkward. Rolling up to the office holiday party on Ken’s arm, seeing you all glowing and handsome with another woman… forced to think about all the things I’d lost. Then I’d have to break up with him, because it’s just too complicated, too weird, he’d know I still had feelings for you, and that would make everything weird…”

Gus completely blanks out, he doesn’t know for how long, but he’s saved from having to answer any of _that_ by a high-pitched shriek. The shriek pierces Ken’s drunken slumber, he bolts up from Shawn’s shoulder only to fall off the bench along the cabin wall and onto the floor. Gus gets to the door first, to pull a panicking Ronnie back inside.

“Yurt, woman, dead woman…” He grabs at and lets go of Gus’ shirt about five times in a row, before he manages to breathe a little and calm down enough to get something coherent across. “There is a dead woman in my yurt.”

“Who?” Gus gives him a very gentle shake. 

“I don’t know, a woman in shiny underwear with a giant rock where her face is supposed to be! Well she wasn’t there for _me_!” He pulls away at last, with a flap of his arm towards where Pat and Jan are working on the radio again. “Pat and I are in a two-bed yurt, okay? They stuck the IT guys together.”

“Oh god…” Pat breaks away from Jan, stumbles a few steps towards the group gathering around Ronnie. 

“Pat didn’t bring--”

“If someone showed up to meet Pat, then there’s a car--”

“ _Amy_.”

If the mood in the room hadn’t been tense enough over the news of a dead, near-naked woman in the nerd tent, this would have pushed it over. It pushes it over something, anyway. Brad launches himself through the small crowd and at Pat with an inarticulate cry, but neither of them is exactly a fighter. It’s more for their collective dignity than their physical safety that the others pull them apart, each collapsing, sobbing, into a different set of arms. 

“What the _hell_ is going on?” Jan demands.

“Oh, Pat was having an affair with Amy,” Shawn says, matter-of-factly. “Brad didn’t know. Amy was hoping to use this retreat as a chance to get some real alone time with Pat, until Brad wound up coming along, but Amy isn’t a quitter. When the groups started to relax a little and people started to think maybe they didn’t need to worry about Carol’s killer, Amy snuck off to Pat’s yurt to wait for her lover, but Pat’s not who found her there. Then when Ronnie went out to get his book, he found the aftermath. The question is, out of everyone who’s been in and out since we discovered our tires had been slashed, who else has wandered off alone? Oh, not Ronnie-- he wouldn’t have had time, he’d still be covered in blood if he had smashed a woman’s face in with a rock. I, haha, uh… I pick up a little, you know, with seeing Gus consult with the police.”

Shawn doesn’t mention that Amy was one of the few people who might know Carol’s secret. Gus would bet even money that Shawn knows exactly who’s been out of the room, alone or otherwise, but what about people who headed out together and split off-- to use different bathrooms, to enter different yurts, to join another group.

“If I hadn’t just seen her all murdered, I would be _so_ much more interested in how this affair happened,” Ronnie says, leveling Pat with a look. "Leave it to the heterosexuals..."

“We can’t just wait around while more people get murdered!” Cheryl says. “Fred, _do_ something!”

‘Fred, do something’ is, if anything, even more laughably unlikely than the schlubbier half of the IT department having an affair with the objectively much more attractive Amy under the nose of her not physically adept but not unattractive husband, and yet Fred squares his shoulders and gives a resolute nod.

“I’ll go.”

“You’ll what? Go _where_?”

“The ranger’s cabin. It’s not an unreasonable hike down to it from here. Only one of us has to go.”

“Fred, that’s _insane_ ,” Cheryl says.

“Yeah, Fred, like… I want to get out of here as much as the next guy after all that, but you can’t just walk out of here with a murderer running around,” Ronnie nods, resting a hand on Fred’s shoulder.

“Someone’s got to. We can’t call, we can’t drive. Fellas, my _wife_ is stuck here. I mean… someone’s _got_ to. And besides… if the killer’s only killing women, well, then shouldn’t I be fine? I got bear mace.”

“Bear mace could work…” Ronnie allows. "Though I've never maced a bear..."

“Give us another night to try and get the radio working. Head out in the morning, with a map and bear mace,” Jan says. 

Things settle after that, though Brad and Pat stay on opposite ends of the cabin. People stay in bigger groups, and when night falls, everyone who’d been in a single yurt, plus Ronnie, Pat, and now Brad, sleep on the cabin floor instead. Ken is snoring deeply in his makeshift bedroll between Ronnie and Alyssa, Shawn finds himself seeking out the remaining Lucy and Barb in the crowd as everyone starts bedding down. Barb doesn’t even have a pillow and blanket, she’d fallen asleep at the table with her cardigan rolled up under her head after all the excitement without ever making it out to her yurt. A group escorts Jan to the yurt she and Barb had been sharing to get her things and bring them back to the cabin. She drapes a blanket over Barb, but otherwise lets her sleep. Satisfied that it would be very difficult to murder anyone in the cabin, and that both the remaining people on Carol’s list are there, Shawn takes Gus back out to their yurt.

“Okay,” He starts, sitting Gus down on the end of the bed. “So this just proves what we’ve been thinking-- someone is after specific targets. I’ve been talking to people at dinner trying to nail down everyone’s movements without putting anyone on edge, you know, just talking, and right now… the problem as I see it is, everyone seems to have an alibi for at least one of the times I have down as being when a crime happened… but I haven’t nailed it all down yet! There’s some wiggle room where someone is mistaken about who was in their group, but I don’t know _who_. If a group went out for a walk, and someone slipped off and rejoined them, then… I can’t know what I wasn’t there for, I can only rely on what other people notice.”

Which is, Gus knows, inadequate-- he’s been doing this with Shawn for long enough and even he doesn’t catch the things Shawn does, though he catches enough. The people he works with? There’s definitely enough they aren’t able to report, even if they knew how important it was… 

“There are people who aren’t on the retreat…” He says. “But I don’t think any of them are living out in the woods like a wild man so they can kill people. I mean, they’re not here because they’re not even outdoorsy enough for a bed inside a yurt. And most of them I wouldn’t know. But, I mean, it’s _possible_.”

“Possible, but not probable…” Shawn nods, moving to sit beside Gus. “Something is still bothering me here. There’s something I’m not getting. I’m going to need to get a look at Pat and Ronnie’s yurt, from the outside, just… I need to get the whole scene in my head to find the missing piece here.”

“Did you actually learn anything from looking at Carol’s yurt from the outside?”

“Don’t get sassy with me, Guster. I’m all we’ve got, unless you think Fred’s really going to bring the cavalry. The man is like a piece of dry, white toast. Dry, white toast with restless leg syndrome.”

“He’s got bear mace.”

“Mm… what do you want to bet he sprays it in his own face before he’s halfway there? Not even because a murderer came after him, just because he sees a squirrel and panics.”

“Do _you_ want to hike down to the rangers’ station?” 

The thing is, Shawn _does_. He knows he could make it there, he trusts himself on that in a way he does not trust Fred, to get to the rangers’ station without being caught by a killer, and to relay all of the pertinent information, first to the rangers and then to the police. But that would mean leaving Gus alone at murder central with a half-solved puzzle, and that is one thing he can’t do.

Well, half-solved is a little generous. If he could figure out what about Amy’s death is bugging him, maybe he could say half. Still, he lets Gus talk him out of poking around another murder site for the night, and he does what he can to get some sleep.

Come morning, everyone is groggy, no one moreso than Barb, who’d spent all night hunched over the table-- except for maybe Ken, who’s not so much hung over as he seems to be still drunk, or drunk again.

“You’re really hitting it hard after Carol, huh, buddy?” Shawn steers him to a chair off in a corner, motioning for Gus to get him an undoctored cup of coffee. 

“Carol would have liked you _so much_. No, no, I’m not-- I had a little-- no… I just take the _edge_ off, is all. She’d’ve liked you _so much_.”

Ken is at least a distraction from Cheryl’s teary goodbye, as Fred equips himself with a canteen, a can of bear mace, a whistle, a map, and a compass. The hike to the rangers’ station is doable, but not by everyone. Those who’d stayed behind during the first hike, like Cheryl, wouldn’t be able to make that distance… she’d mentioned not being able to do much walking, not over uneven ground, and she’d hung back, but she had a consistent alibi from the others who hadn’t gone, including Fred who’d stayed back to keep her company, and Pat, and Carol. Well, Carol hadn’t been with the group, or they wouldn’t be in quite this mess. 

Pairs and groups go out to the bathrooms, the showers-- such as they are. They’re cold and brief and the privacy is limited, but Shawn’s options are a cold shower with the possibility of an audience of strangers, or getting kicked out of bed because of Gus’ sensitive sniffer, so he tells himself it’s still better than gym in junior high and he and Ronnie stick a fully-clothed Ken in one of the stalls and douse him quickly before everyone else in their group strips down and steps into their own stalls for quick and businesslike showers. The plywood sides of each shower stall extend from mid-calf to mid-chest and they close with flimsy curtains rather than doors, but he keeps reminding himself gym was worse, and the whole affair isn’t so bad.

“Not too painful, right, buddy?” He says, once he’s dressed and ready to help shepherd Ken back out to the land of the living. 

“He’s not normally like this,” Ronnie says.

“His best friend got decapitated, I’d hit the bottle pretty hard if I was in his shoes,” Shawn replies, though he wishes he hadn’t, because now he has to think about it, has to think about if it was Gus and what he’d do and how he’d feel and he has to reach over and grab Gus’ hand on the walk back to the cabin, has to squeeze it to ground himself and thank his lucky stars that Gus will just write it off as part of their whole fake relationship. 

“I mean sleepy. Ken’s a party guy. Well, not like a _real_ party guy.” Ronnie rolls his eyes. “But I mean at office parties, he’s the guy who’s dancing really badly, and wearing something as a hat, and making everyone do karaoke, and calling me Ronnie Spector.”

“The wall of sound guy?”

“That’s Phil Spector.” Gus actually squeezes his hand.

“I thought Phil Spector was the guy who did Solsbury Hill.”

“Well, you’re _thinking_ of Phil Collins but Solsbury Hill is _actually_ Peter Gabriel.”

“Who wrote Glory of Love.”

“Glory of Love is Peter Cetera.”

“Aw, I wish I had someone who could do that cute lil thing you guys have going,” Ronnie says-- Shawn is pretty sure at this point that he’s just stuck on ‘sardonic’ as a default setting and that he’s being genuine. “Like you finish each other’s… brainwaves.”

Shawn really doesn’t know what to do with Ronnie’s genuine admiration of his and Gus’ totally not-genuine relationship, so after a split second of panic, he goes with his strongest suit: saying something so stupid that people will give up on looking any deeper. 

“Are you _sure_ Glory of Love is Peter Cetera and not Huey Lewis and the News?”

“That’s the Power of Love, Shawn, and don’t even pretend you don’t know that, because it was in Back to the Future.”

Well, he can’t argue with that. He’s seen Back to the Future too many times to argue with that.

Back in the cabin, the sense of unease he’s been feeling just grows stronger, but his headcount as people come in and out is consistent-- at no point since his shower has everyone been in the cabin, but there’s _never_ been just one person gone. He’s just freaking out because he let himself think about the murderer getting Gus, but that doesn’t mean something is actually _wrong_ , it just means…

It just means something is very wrong, because another group gets in and he takes everyone in and realizes there are only two people missing-- Barb, and Fred.

“Gus, where’s Barb?”

Ken makes a sound from somewhere in the region of Ronnie’s lap, as Ronnie looks to Alyssa for help she pretends not to notice him needing. Gus makes a headcount of his own and turns back to Shawn wide-eyed.

“Where’s Barb?” Shawn repeats, this time at volume, the rest of the cabin swiveling to stare at him and then to search amongst themselves. 

They go out in three groups-- barring Ronnie, Ken, and Cheryl who stay in the cabin-- Shawn and Jan leading one group towards Jan and Barb’s yurt, fearing the worst. They don’t find it there, but a scream from the direction of the women’s shower area answers any remaining questions. 

Barb is in her bathrobe rather than her sweater set, and looks to have been strangled by her towel, and the blaring siren in Shawn’s head that says _wrong_ is starting to take shape, but every time he reaches for it, he loses something.

“I don’t like this, Shawn. I don’t like this at all.” Gus drags him towards their yurt, as the others return to the cabin with the sad news that showering at the campsite was, in fact, very painful for one person. “I know I’ve said that before, but three women are dead, and one more woman is on that list. And Alyssa _isn’t_ on that list but she works with financials, too, and I just wanted to have an acceptable work retreat experience. Nothing about this is acceptable!”

“Shh, shh, honeybunch.” Shawn wraps his arms around Gus, rocking gently with him, the two of them standing outside their yurt-- someone waves to them from the cabin, he waves back to indicate… something. That they’re fine, they’re together, they’re accounted for. Just a couple seeking some alone time, nothing weird about that. “Honeybunches of oats, breathe. Eventually someone is going to come check on us even if Fred doesn’t make it, right? Like, eventually when we don’t show up again--”

“It’s a four day weekend.”

“Great, well, this is day three.”

“And three people died!”

“Oh, at least. I mean-- no. I mean, they will definitely find us, alive, and then we’ll help catch the killer, just like we always do. Come on. People up here, not everyone came with their spouses, people have husbands and wives and families and roommates and friends and everyone else at your office, who will notice if we do not come back. Juliet is going to know something is up if I go five whole days without bothering her.”

“Juliet!” Gus looks up-- he’s not sure when he actually let himself put his head down on Shawn’s shoulder and even attempt to relax, he’s not sure how to _deal_ with the fact that it had been comforting. “Juliet knows where we are!”

“Yes! She does! Because she told me you were-- Okay, well, great! Then she’ll tell Lassie it’s weird we’re not back yet and… okay, and he won’t come save us, he’ll say this is like a vacation for him, but _she_ will!”

“Shawn, we don’t actually work there, if they don’t call us about a case, she won’t… she won’t know we’re not back.”

“Okay, well… well…” And he’s at a loss, and he knows it, but this is Gus, this is important, and he thinks about finding Gus the way they had found Carol, Amy, Barb… He thinks about what could have happened if Juliet hadn’t let it slip that Gus would be going away for the weekend and Gus had gone off and not said ‘hey Shawn I’ll be in the woods for four days’ and something had happened, imagines getting a phone call from the chief, he thinks about a cold room and a sheet and a body and how empty his life would be and he thinks he can’t really pretend anymore that certain feelings aren’t there, where they’ve been for a very long time.

This is not the time or the place to say it, but he can admit it to himself, anyway. And maybe if he can admit to himself that Gus is it for him, the most important person in his world, he can move past some mental block and find the thing, the thing that’s eating at him.

“Let’s go in,” He sighs, giving Gus one final squeeze. “And at this point, we should let Lucy know… something.”

“I’ll handle talking to Lucy. Just… I don’t know. Keep your eyes open.”

It feels like a stupid thing to say as soon as he says it, that’s what Shawn _does_. But so what, fine, it was a stupid thing to say, he can live with that. He feels stupid all over. He feels the incredibly stupid urge to lean up and kiss Shawn because he knows people must be watching them from the cabin to make sure they don’t get murdered and that’s what couples do, and when did he just give up on the idea of having the planned-upon breakup? When did he shift into wanting his coworkers to think he and Shawn were a thing?

If he’s honest with himself, really honest, maybe Alyssa was always just… reasonable. Sensible. Normal. An attractive girl with many quantifiably good qualities, like loving math, and being good at math, and being nice to people, and… and being a woman, and not being Shawn.

Gus would rather not be honest with himself.

There’s a scream from the cabin as they’re walking back, and they break into a run, grabbing onto each other as they go.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Alyssa tells them, as they arrive panting at the doorway. “It’s a mouse. Jan caught it under a coffee mug, it just ran over Lucy’s hand.”

“Lucy…” Gus breaks away, heading for her. 

“Well. Thank goodness she’s okay,” Shawn pats Alyssa’s shoulder before squeezing past her, though he hesitates over joining Gus. He can handle telling Lucy to be careful and stay with the group. He spots Ken and Ronnie and heads their way instead.

“Liz…” Ken slurs. It’s not exactly a greeting, more a very weird decree. “That’s… that one’s you. Carol would have come up with that.”

“I was going to ask if he was coming around, but somehow I’m sensing the answer is no.”

“I swear he’s been with me _all day_ ,” Ronnie says. Shawn can only guess that the wide eyes are meant to be a mark of sincerity, though Ronnie’s struggle with sincerity remains. “He hasn’t had anything to drink. I mean, like… I tried to make him drink some water, and then I gave him half a diet coke, and then he just passed out on me again.”

“Hey, Ken? What would Carol have come up with?”

“Liz. Lizzz’z’a nickname. Like ‘liz’beth Taylor. ‘Liz’beth Taylor… ‘s’married to--”

“Richard Burton.” Shawn says, and something _almost_ clicks. “Elizabeth Taylor- Richard Burton- Burton Guster- me.”

“Oh, screw you, he got all those steps and I got Ronnie Spector?” Ronnie huffs. “Bitch, you _know_ if I had a drag name it would be Linda Lo, ‘cause I enjoy being a girl.”

“They’re not all winners,” Ken apologizes, before flopping over, dead to the world.

“Who’s Gabrielle?” Shawn asks, with enough urgency to take Ronnie aback, but to no avail where reaching Ken is concerned. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ronnie shakes his head. “Not everyone gets a nickname anyway. I mean I shouldn’t complain, because at least mine is better than Pat’s.”

“What’s Pat’s?”

“It’s Pat.”

“... Yeah, okay. Okay okay okay… I need to find Gabrielle. Because whoever Gabrielle is? Drugged Ken,” Shawn whispers.

“No!” Ronnie’s jaw drops, his voice loud enough to draw a couple of looks. 

Shawn smacks his forehead, palm sliding down his face.

“Yes. ‘ _Gabrielle_ ’ gave Ken his coffee, and since then, he’s been… like this.”

“Well, I don’t know any Gabrielle, but half the people here probably have a whole pharmacy sitting in the back of their car and they don’t even think about it. Hubby could tell you which things would knock a bitch out.”

“Screaming!” Shawn snaps his fingers. 

“Oh, yeah, there was a mouse--”

“No, we didn’t hear any of them scream. And Barb would have had time to make some noise, they were _all_ drugged! Then the killer used the axe and the rock and the towel to finish them off and make it look like a violent crime, a moment of pre-meditated passion, so we wouldn’t think about who has drugs in their car.”

“Or who left their cars unlocked or their windows down. It’s a work retreat in the middle of the woods, who’s going to think they’re getting broken into?” Ronnie is saying, as Gus rejoins them, quickly hunkering down to get caught up.

“We all thought Barb was just feeling it after she spent the night sleeping over the table, but she was drugged.”

“Barbie doesn’t do drugs, she just takes the _edge_ off…” Ken says, in a brief moment of near-lucidity.

“Gus,” Shawn stares at him. “I think there’s been a terrible mistake.”


	4. A Paso Doble... Called Corruption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Acknowledging his feelings might be a new thing for Shawn... having them is not. Also, they are still very much investigating multiple murders.

“What?” Gus hisses, flails a little. Does that little thing where he has to walk away and then circle back just to work out some of the nerves of it. “ _Shawn_! You’re telling me Barbara has nothing to do with this?”

“Nothing at all. The killer made the same mistake we did, he-- or she-- saw the names Carol wrote down and assumed Barb was Barbara, but Barb is Barbie and Barbie is Ken. Now, think back to Carol’s murder, think about what’s missing.”

“ _You_ think about what’s missing.”

“The screams. Think about it. Someone comes into Carol’s yurt, with an _axe_ , advances on her, she doesn’t scream? She’s _not_ that far from the cabin, _someone_ would have heard her. And Amy, expecting her lover and then being surprised by a stranger carrying a big-ass rock? Unless they were drugged. Which means the killer doesn’t actually need to be strong enough to overpower Carol, or Amy, or Barb.”

“And the drugs could come from anywhere, because we _ohhh_ …”

“The killer dosed Ken, too, not knowing he’s Barbie, just to keep him quiet and out of the way after Carol’s death, but given how close they were, it’s possible they were going to take him out anyway. But Ken hasn’t been alone. Ronnie’s obviously not the murderer, because he has kind eyes. More importantly, because if he was the murderer, he’d have killed Ken _so_ long ago, he’s been literally carrying him all day. Now, Ken said ‘Gabrielle’ gave him coffee topped off with a little booze, I think ‘Gabrielle’ dosed him then, so that if Ken noticed any off taste in that coffee, he or she could excuse it as being from the alcohol. So the question is, who is Gabrielle?”

“Okay, okay… word association!” Gus claps his hands together. “If Ken is Barbie then there’s something that makes Gabrielle Gabrielle, so… give me something!”

“Gabrielle Union,” Ronnie suggests.

“See, that’s what I said. Except then I would think Gus, and I know it wasn’t him.”

“What, because he’s black?”

“No, because he _brings it on_.” Shawn snaps his fingers, though Ronnie continues to level him with the same unimpressed look.

“I do bring it on.” Gus nods, adjusting his shirt a little. Wearing that little pleased-with-himself smile that Shawn has always secretly liked a little more than he might let on.

“Gabrielle, Gabrielle Union, Bring it On-- Alyssa,” Ronnie says, ignoring Gus’ preening entirely.

“What? No--”

“Alyssa was a cheerleader. She has a picture of her university cheer team on her desk.”

“Okay, we’re getting caught up on this Gabrielle Union idea, we don’t even know if that’s the right train of thought at all,” Gus says. “Alyssa is a kind, beautiful girl who does math. A girl you could bring home to your parents.”

Ronnie’s eyes widen and he looks between them. 

“The Gusters don’t approve of… all this,” Shawn gestures to himself. “Not because of the gay thing-- bi thing-- I mean for a lot of other, unrelated reasons. Don’t worry about it, he just says things, it’s fine.”

“I mean, is it fine, though?”

“Gus and I are perfectly cobracetic.”

“Copacetic.”

“I’ve heard it both ways.”

“You have absolutely not heard it both ways, Shawn.”

“Gus and I are perfectly copacabana,” Shawn turns back to Ronnie. “We’re in agreement that Alyssa is a kind, beautiful girl who does math and who you could bring home to Gus’ parents, but more importantly, she has an alibi for at least some of the murder. Ronnie, can you keep an eye on Ken? And maybe also Lucy?”

“I told Lucy to be careful because we heard Carol had wanted to talk to her about something important before she died,” Gus adds. “But Ken for sure.”

“Oh, sure, I’m not doing anything else,” Ronnie rolls his eyes. Then again, in Ronnie-speak, it seems to be the closest thing to reassurance they’re likely to get.

“We need to get another look at the cars,” Shawn whispers to Gus, as he ushers him out of the cabin, hand on his arm. “The footprint situation out there is going to be a nightmare, anything useful probably got trampled when we were freaking out about the slashed tires--”

“Not actually done freaking out about that, actually.”

“Right, but here’s the thing, if the killer isn’t a rep, then they had to break into a rep’s car-- a backseat, a trunk, wherever your little wheelie briefcases full of drugs go, which a certain percentage of people will have just left in the trunk for the trip because it’s a work trip and it’s four days, so they wouldn’t need the space a briefcase takes up for luggage.”

“Unless they’re _you_. I don’t remember telling you you needed to pack an entire campsite.”

This is technically because Gus never told Shawn what to pack, or to pack at all, because he did not want to bring him. However, now that murders are going on around them, he’s pretty glad to have him there. There’s something about the idea of facing a murderer without Shawn which is even more panic-inducing than the normal, routine murderer-facing he does with Shawn. He does not like to think about the fact that there’s a normal, routine murderer-facing in his life, but it’s the kind of thing that keeps coming up.

“Gus, don’t be a sad ragdoll. My overpacking and taking up the space your briefcase full of drugs used to take up is saving you from the potential ramifications of having a briefcase full of drugs stolen from your car.”

“Please don’t phrase it like that.”

“What, briefcase full of drugs? But it makes us sound so dangerous and badass, like you’re the sexy undercover cop in the seedy underbelly of the city, you know I’m dirty but if you bust me you lose the big fish, meanwhile we get closer and closer, in a beautiful yet dangerous tango.”

Gus narrows his eyes, ninety nine point eight percent sure that Shawn is at least semi-accurately describing the plot of a movie he caught on late night cable, and seventy six point three percent sure that if it is, it has a white guy and a black guy, but since he can’t name that movie off the top of his head, he fears any callout he fires back with will fall flat. 

“Is it the tango you’re objecting to? How about a beautiful yet dangerous paso doble? A paso doble… called _corruption_.”

They reach the cars, at which point Gus is less giving Shawn an agitated silent treatment because he mostly objects to Shawn acting like everything is fine and making jokes when they don’t have the police to back them up the way they usually do when a killer is on the loose, but he also does object to the tango, or he objects to how he doesn’t object to the tango part, or he objects to himself having a brief fantasy of he and Shawn taking ballroom dance lessons together, and obviously if they took dance lessons then Gus should lead because he knows way more about dance, if not ballroom dance, but of course Shawn would insist on leading because he’s Shawn, and… anyway, once they reach the cars it’s less a punishing wall of silence and more a respectful and helpful quiet as Shawn needs to focus.

There’s an open trunk on one car, at the edge of the parking area, which is notable-- though even Gus couldn’t say whose car, just that it looked like one of the company cars. More notable, as they head back around to their yurt to sit down and hash everything out, Shawn spots a flash of red and white in the woods. 

There, the sort of jumpsuit people use for painting houses, going into clean rooms, and committing murder, _liberally_ bloody, dragged half out of its hiding spot by an animal. The rock over the hole might have stopped any of the people huddling in the cabin from finding the stashed murder coveralls, but something had smelled the blood and dug around it, exposing the shallow dugout and its contents-- though evidently it had found the coveralls disappointing, compared to whatever it imagined.

“That answers one question…” Shawn frowns. “But it kind of leaves several more, if I’m being honest. One, when did someone dig a hole? Maybe while they were slashing tires, except it’s not _near_ the tires, it’s on the edge of the… yurt-zone. Two, how long have they been planning this? I mean, this is well thought out. Three, are we still doing s’mores tonight? Four, who _is_ Gabrielle? Maybe if Ken wakes up Ronnie can get it out of him and when we reconvene--”

Shawn is mid-thought when the shot _zips_ between his nose and Gus’, not leaving a whole lot of space, at which point Gus shrieks, leaping back just as Shawn moves to tackle him to the ground, which leads to Shawn hitting Gus somewhere around the knees and toppling them in a much more awkward way-- more importantly, in a way that offers Gus’ vital organs absolutely no cover against another shot. 

He commando crawls over him, getting hit in the face once for his troubles before he can break through the fearful blubbering. 

“GUS! Gus, hey, hey-- Gus, get it together! Look, you’ve been doing a really good job so far, so just stay with me!” He orders, despite the fact that he would very much like to do some fearful blubbering of his own. He looks for their shooter, but there’s only distant rustling of branches, from where he lies he can’t see enough. He tries scanning his memory of the scene, but it’s no good. The bloody coveralls had dominated his attention then, but when he goes over what else he’d taken in in the background, the woods are too alive. Birds, squirrels, movement all around, odd shapes formed by trees and bushes… ‘Gabrielle’ must have crept out of full concealment when he’d been facing Gus. Gus… lying beneath him, unhurt, or mostly unhurt, but so close. “Okay, okay, first, deep breaths. You were doing so well with all the murders, come on. Now… out of your coworkers, who do you think owns a gun?”

“I don’t know!”

“All right, well I’m thinking rifle, single shot, they had to escape to reload or risk being caught at a disadvantage… obviously our being on the case is putting a little fear into the killer, but there is still a very slim chance that the rangers are going to pull up… eventually. Depending on how fast ol’ Fred walks and whether or not Gabrielle, uh… But hey, let’s be optimistic, let’s be calm, let’s be logical, and let’s be safe.”

Gus takes a few more deep, slow breaths, before finally nodding and letting Shawn help him up. There’s a sudden chill where they aren’t pressed together, he misses the closeness he couldn’t enjoy during that initial panic. Rather than a hole in the canvas wall of the yurt, however, there’s a dart stuck there.

“What…?”

“Ohh… well, this is less of a departure than the gunshot, I guess, and definitely single shot.” Shawn reaches for it, then stops, not sure if ‘Gabrielle’ loaded it himself-- herself?-- or not. “Bear tranqs, the rifle from the locked cabinet with the cell phones, we were all so busy with the phones we didn’t even notice someone had made off with the tranquilizer gun that the rangers keep stashed here, so… If they stashed the gun in the woods to get later, and they stashed the coveralls in that hole, where did they stash the phones?”

Gus lets Shawn take his hand and lead him around to the other side of the yurt-- where he doesn’t see anyone coming from the cabin despite-- because of?-- the scream and the gunshot. Shawn ducks inside, and so Gus follows, standing by dumbly as Shawn goes through his enormous backpack. In a frustrated fit, he strips out of his jeans and changes into a pair of cargo pants, filling the pockets with things from the backpack.

“Is there a plan you wanna let me in on here?”

“Well, if we’re real lucky, we’re going to find your cell phone. Also, all the other cell phones. Also, _the murderer_!”

“Shawn, you’d best not be about to say what I think you’re about to say.”

“We’re sitting ducks here, Gus! Just… sitting! Quacking! We need to be in the woods, hunting the hunter, outsmarting the… We made ourselves targets when we were seen investigating the murders and now we’ve been put on the killer’s list, so we need to head into the woods, either finding the cell phones and calling for backup, or making our way to the rangers’ station, while evading the killer.”

“ _Are you out of your damn mind_?”

“No, we can do this!” He grabs Gus by the shoulders.

“ _We_ didn’t make ourselves targets, okay, _you’re_ investigating the murder, I’m just… I am going to sit in that cabin and wait for someone to drive up here from the rangers’ station with Fred and also a real gun, and I am not leaving that cabin or going anywhere by myself and I am not going to get murdered, and I strongly suggest you come not get murdered with me.”

The bottom drops out of Shawn’s world in an instant-- not because of Gus’ refusal, which is all part of the dance anyway, and doesn’t mean anything, but because the words set off a chain of memories. Ronnie might have picked up on the fact that Shawn is the real powerhouse behind the investigation, a couple others caught a hint of his prowess, but he’s spent the whole weekend propping _Gus_ up, and odds are pretty fair that the killer thinks that Gus, Gus with his PD consulting work, Gus with all Shawn’s adoration and praise, is the one who’s trying to bring him down.

“Don’t make that face at me, you’re not going to make me change my mind,” Gus says, crossing his arms. He’s taken by surprise at the hug that launches itself at him, and he can’t really hug back with his arms trapped between them, so he settles for gently bumping the side of his head against Shawn’s with a sigh. “I mean I’m not going back to the cabin _without_ you.”

“I’m going to hide you, okay, we’re going to keep on the move,” Shawn whispers, dropping his chin down to Gus’s shoulder. 

-

  
  


Somehow, it never did occur to Shawn to be jealous of Gus, over the course of the camping trip. Gus never had to go through the drills and lessons and pop quizzes, but… well, those were just Shawn’s life, and anyway, Gus had other stuff. Stuff where maybe it would be fair for him to be jealous of Shawn and he wasn’t. 

The problem, as Shawn saw it, was that his dad wanted him to grow up to be a cop, and he didn’t want to grow up to be anything. 

Following old tracks through the woods was more fun with Gus tagging along than without, though. Even if he was never really going to use it. Well, he wasn’t going to use it beyond this, anyway-- _this_ being the newest test for his dad to set up for him. While Henry took Gus, Shawn had been partnered up with one of Henry’s old academy buddies who was currently working for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, because apparently one fun and wholesome father and son camping activity was stalking each other through the forest in a twisted game of hide-and-seek to prove that you had actually been paying attention to everything your old man taught you about both following and hiding tracks.

Actually, as far as tests went, this one was fun. Henry’s buddy-- weirdly, also named Henry-- was a pretty cool guy, more laid back than the elder Spencer, but not so laid back as to blow the game by not keeping up. And Shawn’s dad had been willing to give up the advantage of the other Henry knowing where the various hunting blinds were set up, stretches of weird netting strung up and covered with plant bits, to provide a little cover when the woods were sparse. Shawn was kind of afraid to ask if all this stuff was normal stuff that hunters left up during hunting season, or if this was all part of the favor, not that his dad didn’t go over the top often enough, but setting up a maze of hunting blinds in the woods because the woods weren’t woodsy enough-- in fact, driving three hours to camp out near the place where your buddy owed you enough of a favor to create a maze of hunting blinds-- was a new height. But at least running around a maze in the woods playing hide and seek was something a child might want to do, so he wasn’t going to worry about whether it was literally insane to put this kind of work into it, he was going to worry about beating his dad and gorging himself on s’mores.

In the end, Shawn didn’t win, but that didn’t matter, because in the end, it wasn’t his dad who found him. It was Gus. Gus, who sprung out of the bushes and tackled him with a triumphant shout, the two of them rolling down a slight incline in a tangle of knobby limbs to land in a thick bed of wood fern.

“Found you!” Gus grinned at him, scrambling up and into a victory dance. “I found you, I found you! I’m the best at finding! I found you, I found you! You’re the worst at hiding!”

“Well, first of all, that’s a terrible chant,” Shawn got to his feet as well, pushing down on something new and fluttery and warm. He liked to think he wasn’t a terrible sport and despite the usual theatrics of boys their age over games, and the winning and losing thereof, he was always happy for Gus when he got a win in. But there’s being happy for someone and there’s _this_ , this feeling like someone had injected his heart with pop rocks and diet coke and all the blood was moving to the surface of his body, making him feel warm even as he inevitably lost body heat, and he was still noticing a dozen things going on around him at once only now all the things he noticed were Gus.

Gus wasn’t any different, except for a couple leaves in his hair. Gus was the one thing Shawn didn’t _have_ to notice things about because Gus was his _constant_ , but now he was taking in the way the sunlight coming through the trees haloed him and made his skin glow and the way his shirt had come untucked-- he’d made fun of him for tucking it in to begin with, earlier, but Gus had insisted on tucking his shirt into his pants and his pants into his socks in case of snakes or insects. He was suddenly noticing the precise depth of color to his eyes and the width of his smile, and the fact that whether or not his chanting was bad, his victory dance was weirdly kind of graceful, and that yellow looked good on him, something Shawn had never once noticed about anyone. He noticed, for the first time he could remember, that somewhere in their back-and-forth of growth spurts, Gus’ hands had gotten bigger. Which made sense, but he’d never _noticed_ it, or thought that they should press their hands together to see whose were bigger, or thought that actually, maybe, it would just be nice to hold Gus’ hand for no reason at all.

Weird.

“Good job, Gus!” Henry clapped Gus on the shoulder, and Gus beamed even brighter, and Shawn couldn’t have been jealous of him in that moment if he’d tried. “What tipped you off?”

“I’m afraid I can’t reveal my secret advantage. You understand, for next time,” He said, in all seriousness. Henry laughed, and let it go.

He actually let all of it go, for once. Had looked Shawn over and made the decision not to ask him what he would do better next time, not to make him jump through some secondary hoop before allowing him to sit down and relax and make s’mores.

He’d clapped a hand down on his shoulder, too, later on. When they were sitting around the campfire, the light dancing and Gus happily talking about what he and Shawn were studying in school, he’d just patted his shoulder, rubbed a quick couple circles over his back between gentle thumps, like they were just having the same kind of bonding that normal fathers and sons did.

“You’re gonna be okay, Shawn,” Henry said, voice soft and distant and odd, as they both stared into the fire during a lull in the conversation, as they both saw enough out of their peripheral vision that it hardly mattered where their focus was centered. “I’m, uh, proud of you.”

“I lost.”

“Well… you still beat me,” He shrugged. “Anyway, that’s not… There’s… other stuff. Stuff that you-- I want you to work hard, but I’m still… You’re my son. Good talk?”

“Good talk, I guess. And Gus, too?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the complicated, half-pained look to cross Henry’s face. The kind of look he guessed said ‘I’m an emotionally constipated freak, but even I can see Gus’ parents should care more about their awesome kid’.

“Yeah. Gus, too,” Henry said, and gave Shawn’s shoulder one last absent pat. “Of course.”

Shawn was going to get Gus to tell him how he’d tracked him down when he’d been so careful in covering his tracks. Eventually.

-

“When we were kids... you were like… the master!” Shawn straightens back up, releasing Gus just enough that he could get his arms free, if not enough to put much space between them. “Remember?”

“Are you talking about the time your dad took us camping so that we could hunt the most dangerous game?”

Shawn spreads his arms, giving him that ‘yes, keep up’ look. Gus could use the opportunity to move… somewhere. He doesn’t. 

“I mean, I _know_ I couldn’t find you because my dad was covering you guys’ tracks. What I’ve spent the past twenty years wondering is how _you_ found _me_.”

“Well it hasn’t been exactly twenty y-- ugh, forget it. You want to know?” Gus asks, leaning back a little as Shawn nods eagerly. “You _really_ wanna know? You’re _sure_.”

“Yes! This is the mystery that has plagued me for roughly two thirds of our lives!”

“Because there’s no going back once I tell you.”

“Gus, please!”

“I was lucky,” He says.

“What?”

“I got lucky, we were on opposite sides of a bush.”

“I’m sorry, but randomly jumping through the bushes grasping at thin air is a _terrible_ way to play the game, I can’t believe my dad let you get away with that. Although you are his favorite son…”

“No, I mean we were on opposite sides of the bush and I could smell you. It was like _pine tree_! _Pine tree_! _Pine tree_! _Unwashed boy on the cusp of puberty_! _Pine tree_! You stood out.”

“Well that’s devastating for multiple reasons.” Shawn finds his canteen, pressing it into Gus’ hands, and despite all his arguments, Gus slings the strap of it over one shoulder.

“You said you were sure you were ready for this information.”

“No, I mean, I was thinking if we went into the woods you would be super good at this, but what I’m hearing is I was just a very smelly child.”

“Well, you weren’t smellier than any other child, but I did spend more time smelling you. Wait, that sounds creepy, scratch that. I spent more time _near_ you. The smelling is an unfortunate offshoot. This was before the even more unfortunate cologne phase.”

“I happen to have excellent taste in colognes. Which is why now I just steal yours.”

“If you think that’s supposed to surprise me, think again. Now please tell me we are not walking into the woods with a crazy murderer,” Gus says, placing a hand on Shawn’s shoulder and giving his absolute best ‘I’m your best friend and you owe me’ puppy dog eyes.

“Oh, absolutely not. We’re walking into the woods with a very sane murderer. But I am going to be covering our tracks, and I _promise_ , we’ll go to the rangers’ station first, avoiding the road and all major trails, and then _after_ they catch the killer, we can dig up your cell phone. Gus, I am not going to let anything happen to you, okay? I know I’m… me, but I am also dead serious right now-- okay, you know what, that was a bad word choice, scratch _that_. I am so serious, though, I will never, ever let someone murder you because of something I did, or for any reason. Not on my watch. Do you trust me?”

Against his better judgment and in spite of many years’ experience, Gus really does. He trusts Shawn to cover their tracks, to notice if the killer is near, to find the rangers’ station by an as-yet-unforged route through the thickest parts of the woods, and to keep his ass from getting murdered by a sane person. There’s only one thing he doesn’t trust Shawn to do, and that’s to make the safe choices if he’s not there beside him.

He sticks close and they head out, weaving between yurts and then cars, taking the woods on that side of the dirt road to the campsite. With any luck it would keep them out of the killer’s way, but even with that precaution taken, they move slowly and carefully, with frequent stops. The frequent crouching is hell on the thighs, but they’d both rather have aching quads than murder. After all, the road was not an insurmountable obstacle, the killer could easily be on this side, cross to this side at any point along their path. They try to move through underbrush when there’s an animal somewhere or a bird call, signs of regular forest life to blend in with. When the crouching and creeping proves unbearable, they find a secluded spot to sit down and stretch their legs out a little.

Shawn reaches into a pocket, and Gus winces when something there rustles, not like animals in trees at all, just like plastic.

‘ _Dried pineapple_?’, Shawn mouths, holding out the baggie in spite of Gus’ withering glare.

‘ _You know it hurts my teeth_ , _Shawn_ ’, he mouths back, trusting Shawn to read his expression, if not his lips. 

Shawn pops a couple pineapple nibblets with the consistency of leather into his mouth. It’s not so much the consistency Gus has a problem with, though he doesn’t find it very pleasant-- more that when it’s dried, the sweetness is so concentrated and unbalanced.

When they both feel to agitated to remain in place, they move on. It’s the silence that’s killing Shawn-- he’s trying to run down his suspects for the identity of ‘Gabrielle’ as they go, but it always works better if he can say it out loud, especially with Gus as a sounding board. But even just to be able to say his thoughts out loud and hear them would help with figuring out what sounds right, what chain of thought could lead from nickname to person. 

Suddenly, he freezes, grabbing Gus’ arm only to find Gus freezing and reaching for him. There’s a campsite nearby. A splash of orange through the trees. Had the killer been set up nearby all along? Were they someone on the retreat with a backup plan to run to, or someone else entirely, someone Shawn didn’t know? And had they returned to their hiding spot?

“Shawn--” Gus whispers, barely whispers, but his lips are so close to Shawn’s ear he hardly has to breathe his name out. He should say something, do something, take charge somehow and find the thing that will keep Gus safe, but no matter what direction they move, there will be sound, and if the killer is there, or heading their way, then they’re in trouble. 

A man emerges from the tent. A tall man. A dark-haired man.

“That’s not--” Gus starts.

“Wait, that’s--” Shawn’s brow furrows. Against all odds, it really is...


	5. We're an Hour and a Half North of Shakeytown With Papa Bear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shawn and Gus catch a murderer... with just a little help. It's not the hardest thing Shawn has to do this week.

Carlton Lassiter wanted exactly one thing out of this weekend. He likes to think he’s not a man to ask for much. He likes to think he’s a man who gives more than he gets. He is dutiful, diligent, hard-working… He has days off, of course. He even uses them, especially if he has something he wants to do. Right now, this weekend, he had wanted one thing and one thing only-- to be far, far away from Shawn Spencer. He wouldn’t call Spencer the bane of his existence, but only because there were so many real criminals vying for the honor. Spencer was more on the level of… major irritant. He feels like he’s had him stepping on so many cases recently, getting over-involved, sticking his nose in, the goofing off, the ludicrous displays, the jokes, the frankly unnecessary dramatic pauses and general theatrics… it’s been _ceaseless_ , and somehow, even when he does take time for himself, Spencer manages to ruin that, too. It’s not always as bad as having his re-enactment intruded upon, true, but it doesn’t _have_ to be. He goes to a restaurant, he spots Spencer through the window. He does grocery shopping, he hears a familiar voice in the next aisle. He goes to the movies and then Spencer and Guster are crowding into seats next to his, Spencer doesn’t even leave a _buffer_ _seat_! And whenever he wasn’t chewing his popcorn-- _audibly_ \-- he was whispering things that were about to happen. That one had been the worst.

Well… the second worst. Obviously the reenactment debacle had been the worst, there had been a murder. 

Actually, maybe the movie theater was worse. At least the murder was some justification for Spencer’s presence.

So. He had taken the weekend off. He had made it very clear that he was taking this weekend for something important and personal, he had made it very clear that Spencer should be kept occupied and far, far away.

And now, Shawn Spencer is holding onto him for dear life and _weeping_ into his chest. 

Well, so is Guster, but he’s willing to give Guster a little more leeway. He does seem to at least _mostly_ try to keep Spencer’s mayhem contained, after all, and takes the brunt of his annoying nonsense. 

“ _What_ is going on here?”

“We thought you might be a crazy murderer in the woods with a crazy murderer campsite,” Shawn says, when he’s finally reeled in his initial outpouring of ‘Lassie, we’re so glad to see you, please save us’ and so on and so forth. “You have to admit, this looks like the campsite a murderer would have, what is with your tent?”

“This tent is historically accurate to eighteen sixty-three, and it absolutely does not look like something a crazy murderer would have. How many crazy murderers do you know who-- you know what, I am going to stop right there, because I can see where this conversation is going, that’s not the _point_ , the point is I wanted to be far away from _you_ , I specifically requested Detective O’Hara prevent you from following me.”

“Oh, Shawn’s not following you.” Gus sniffs, straightening up. “He’s following me.”

“Well then what are you doing here?”

“Allow me to field that question, Gus and I are here for Gus’ corporate teamwork retreat--”

“Why are _you_ on Guster’s corporate teamwork retreat? Which I assume is for people from his _real_ job.”

“I’m here as his partner, Shawn ‘Elizabeth’ Guster.”

“He’s here because Juliet thought the best way to keep Shawn away from _you_ was to dump him on _me_ ,” Gus says, folding his arms. “He’s claiming to be my domestic partner so that I can’t testify against him in court if he gets in trouble for poking around an active crime scene.”

“Ahem. As I was saying. So, we’re relaxing, doing trust falls, gossiping with the other spouses, hiking with a bunch of people who keep briefcases full of drugs in their cars-- oh, that detail is going to be important. So! Having a good time, gathering in this little, like… cabin-turned-group-meet-up-space for dinner, and we find out Carol has been decapitated.”

“What?” Lassiter finds himself suddenly keyed into what he had been prepared to dismiss as unimportant ramblings. A decapitation will do that to you, he supposes. 

“Carol works with the financials. And she’d noticed something,” Gus nods. 

“Carol made a note to herself to talk with three people about something fishy with those financials-- Amy, Lucy, and the mysterious Barb. Now, Amy and Lucy work with money also, but Barbara McBushwell--”

“Her name is Barbara Daniels. Or… was.”

“She’s a secretary,” Shawn continues, undaunted. 

“Administrative assistant,” Gus corrects, though Shawn is no more daunted by that than he had been by the prior interruption.

“Carol also noted that she might need to speak to legal. Whatever she was onto, it was something big. Something _deadly_. But ‘Barb’ wasn’t Barbara McDaniels, ‘Barb’ was ‘Barbie’ and ‘Barbie’ was Ken ‘Malibu’ Dreamhouseman--”

“It’s just Ken Houseman.”

“Carol’s best friend, despite his _terrible_ fashion sense. See, the two of them liked to give people nicknames, and _Gabrielle_ \--”

“Shawn, we’ll have time to fill Lassiter in on all of this after he calls the cops about the murders.”

“Wait, the murders are plural now?”

“We’re getting to that, but if you could grab your phone--”

“No can do. I do not have a cell phone with me, it is in my car. In case of emergency, it is a brisk forty minute hike from my campsite. In case of a real emergency, I have a radio with which I can contact the rangers’ station, and on a good day, possibly the local sheriff’s department. I haven’t tried. I am just out of range of the SBPD, which is exactly how I want it, because this is my one weekend in which I was not going to be on the clock and in which I was _not_ going to talk to you.”

“The rangers’ station! Yes, Lassie, call the rangers’ station! The cabin up by the yurt-zone, everyone is really hoping to not get murdered like the three murders in three days we’ve already had! The killer slashed everyone’s tires!”

“And if Fred Harper hasn’t made it down there, they need to look for him, the killer could have gone after him before he could get help.”

Lassiter waves for them to be quiet, and he fusses with his small, very un-dusty radio, tuning into the band used by the rangers for the area’s parkland. Not that Shawn falls quiet, exactly.

“Gabrielle. Gabrielle, Gabby, the great Gabarino… G-- oh! Oh, oh… wait for it…”

“Yeah, the campsite uphill from where you are, off the dirt road, cabin B, has no one reached you to report on the triple homicide?” Lassiter waves for Shawn to be quiet a little harder, not that he expects results. 

“No, of _course_ he hasn’t, because he was never _going_ to the rangers’ station! Gabby Fred Harper, the guy so bland no one notices when he leaves the room, and so annoying no one looks for him very hard, he doesn’t have the upper body strength to brutally murder a capable, active woman, let alone three of them, but if they were drugged…” Shawn puts a hand to his head, though in the interest of brevity, he shaves a few seconds off his usual routine. “Morning one, Jan collects everyone’s phones and locks them up. Fred Harper excuses himself several times for the bathroom, which is a brisk walk away from the cabin-- equidistant from the parking area. He goes out, he slashes a couple tires, he comes back. He has another mug of English Breakfast tea, he says it goes right through him, he goes out, slashes tires, comes back. When everyone goes outside for the speed-run birdwatching challenge, nobody notices Fred’s lagging behind.”

Shawn feels a little guilty not to have noticed, he might have put things together faster, but while the trust falls and pharmaceutical bingo seemed like new punishments being focus group-ed by Hell, the speed bird-spotting was something he and Gus could _win_ , he’d been at the front of the group to spot things.

“Wait, _Fred_?”

“Fred gets the phones and the tranq gun from the cabin locker, he shoves them out the window, around the back of the cabin where no one is likely to go. He slips Carol a mickey at lunch. When people get together for the big hike, Fred’s wife can’t manage it, he stays behind with her. Carol, feeling drowsy, goes for a little lie-down. Fred slips out and stashes the phones and the gun in the woods. He doesn’t _need_ the tranquilizer dart-- or so he thinks-- because he has access to heavy barbituates. While Carol is out of it, Fred gets the coveralls from his trunk. He-- oh, oh no, no, he… he hacks off her head, she never even wakes up, but the-- the mess…”

Gus clears his throat. “Could the _spirits_ maybe keep this one rolling?”

“He stashes the bloody coveralls under a rock, comes back clean as a whistle. See, Fred knows Carol was onto him but he can’t know who she spoke to. Just that she had a list written down, on her desk. Maybe he wanted to pay for his wife’s dream vacation, maybe he just wanted to take an early retirement, but Fred was trying to skim money from the wrong company. Someone tipped Carol to a mistake and she was putting the pieces together. When Amy splits off from the group to wait for lover-boy-- long story, not important-- she’s feeling fine. A little woozy, maybe, but she chalks it up to excitement, carrying out an affair right under her husband’s nose, sort of kind of doing it in the woods. She gets to the yurt where she knows her lover will join her, once he notices she’s gone from the group, strips down to wait for him… but she’s so _sleepy_. Oh, she, she’s feeling her eyelids getting heavy, when a man in bloodstained coveralls, gloves, maybe some kind of a mask comes in, she doesn’t even have the strength to cry out before he’s-- oh! Finishing her off with a _rock_ , oh!”

“What about Fred’s alibi?”

“What, from his _wife_? Oh I doubt she’s in on it,” Shawn shakes his head. He remembers her fear, genuine. But he also remembers Fred’s amusement-- ‘I don’t want to ride in a car with a murderer!’, ‘you’re going to be in the same car as _me_ ’-- in a brand new light. “But he’d slip out and slip back, she wouldn’t even think of it as him being _gone_ , not in any suspicious way. He’s the background hum of her life, and just _look_ at him, of course when people are talking about who they were with when, she would think Fred was there, Fred’s always _there_ , or he’s around. Older couple, years of trust but also a sort of distance between them bred by years of routine and familiarity? She didn’t notice him coming and going half of the times he came and went that first morning. Perfect alibi. And, as you said, Gus, she can’t be called upon to testify against him.”

“Great, well, anything else I should know about?”

“Oh, there’s something very important you should know about,” Gus nods, shifting over to stand next to Shawn-- mostly so that he could elbow him.

“He doses both Barbara and Ken, pills in coffee, little bit of booze in Ken’s case. Either he knows about the nickname and he’s hedging his bets, or he just wants Ken out of the way, but Ken is never alone. Fred takes his chance to play the hero, he volunteers to hike down to the rangers’ station, but he’s not going, he’s lurking in the woods, waiting. And Ken might not give him the opportunity, but… Barbara, well, she falls behind a little. He catches her outside the women’s showers, strangles her with her own towel. She goes down easy enough. But there’s a problem-- Ken’s zonked out, he’s no trouble even if he can’t get to him, but he can’t be sure Lucy doesn’t know about his dirty dealings, and also he thinks Gus is a master detective-- long story, not important--”

“The man tried to tranquilize me. With a _gun_.”

“I’ll add that to the list of charges,” Lassiter says, with a slight eyeroll.

“Okay, sassy-Lassie, do you want to catch a killer or not?”

“Spencer, I was _born_ to catch killers. If there’s a murderer stalking the woods, I will find him, and I will take him in.”

He ducks into his tent and emerges with handcuffs, gun, and badge, which Shawn thinks defeats the point of having a weekend where the police department can’t reach him, but he’s not going to point that out given he very much wants his and Gus’ lives saved. 

The radio crackles, and Shawn dives for it before Lassiter can pick it back up.

“Yes? Hello?”

“--tching you through to the SBPD--”

“Carlton?” Juliet’s voice comes over, tinny and crackly. “Did you say something about a triple homicide at a campground? Where are you? Um, over.”

“Breaker breaker, this is your good buddy Shawn Spencer, we’re an hour and a half north of shakeytown with papa bear and we need you to send up some gumball machines, over.”

“ _Shawn_?”

“Juliet, hi!” Gus reaches past Shawn to grab the radio, elbowing him as he wrestles it away-- not that Shawn puts up too much of a fight. “There have been three murders and also the murderer wants to murder us. Over.”

“Can I use my own radio to talk to my own partner? _Please_?”

It’s a very aggressive ‘please’, which somehow sounds less like ‘please’ than not having said ‘please’ at all. Gus hands the radio over with a nod.

“O’Hara, we’re looking for a man named--” He snaps his fingers.

“Fred Harper.”

“Fred Harper, he has killed three people and _will_ kill again, possibly Guster. The rangers are sending a car up to the campsite where everyone he _hasn’t_ murdered is stranded. _I_ am stranded with Spencer and Guster, which you’ll recall is the number one thing I did not want this weekend. Over.”

“I’m so sorry, I had no idea you would be anywhere near the campgrounds where Gus’ work retreat would be-- when you said this weekend was important, I assumed you had a family thing! Or a date! Although, yeah, no… of course being alone in the woods is more likely than a date, right. Over.”

“Just get a patrol car up here so I have somewhere to put Harper once I bag him. Over.”

“Yes! Of course, on that-- I’ll be there, we’ll start a manhunt-- Absolutely. I really am sorry, though! Over.”

“Good. I’m hanging up now.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say ‘over and out’?” Gus asks.

“I’m not going to say ‘over and out’, it sounds… silly.”

“You were saying ‘over’ the whole time, now ‘over and out’ is silly?” Shawn arches an eyebrow.

“Spencer, I’m not going to dignify that with a response. I am going on a manhunt, you and Guster are going to stay put right here.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Yeah, Lassie, what if he finds us while you’re trying to find him? I, for one, feel better if Gus has an armed police escort.”

“Absolutely not, I don’t want you getting in the way, just stay in the tent. If he’s looking for Gus, he’s not going to check some stranger’s tent. Now I will be back when I have caught the killer.”

“This tent is not very much like the yurt.” Gus mumbles, but he does go in, carefully lying down on the cot inside so that his feet dangle off the end where his shoes won’t get dirt on the bedroll. Shawn, following behind, just sits on the ground beside him and leans in so that they’re roughly shoulder to shoulder. Also, it does not escape Gus’ notice that he’s carrying a shovel now. “When did you get a shovel?”

“Just now, when I saw a shovel outside Lassiter’s tent and thought ‘oh, if the murderer shows up, maybe I can hit him with a shovel’. How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know. Exhausted. Relieved, terrified, confused, take your pick. Fred Harper? He’s so… normal.”

“It’s always the normal ones. Except for when it’s the freaky ones, But I mean… most murderers are, they’re… boring. Boring white people who wake up one day and decide they’re capable of committing a horrible crime in order to make their boring suburban lives slightly more pleasant. Some of them murder their wives, some of them embezzle funds from their places of work and then have to kill to cover it up, some of them… just like to.”

“It’s just… I know him. Not really well, but well enough that I wouldn’t have thought he could plan out multiple murders like this and then go through with them. If I had to imagine he was capable of one half of that I’d guess he wasn’t capable of the other, you know? Like, not necessarily ‘he’d never go through with it’, maybe like… he’d snap at age sixty-five and stab somebody at his retirement party just because he’d been so aggressively bland up until then. I’ve had the same exchange with him a hundred times standing by the coffee maker and, like… he tried to shoot me with bear tranquilizers? I laugh at his not-quite-jokes even though they’re really not funny, I say ‘how’s it going’ in the hallway, I… You think you know people, at least a little bit. At least that they won’t murder you and like three to five other people.”

He gestures vaguely, and Shawn catches his hand, their fingers lacing together before Shawn turns and bends his head down, presses his lips to Gus’ temple. Not a kiss, really. Not even unfamiliar. When they were kids, sometimes… sometimes if he was talking about something, and agitated or anxious, Shawn would put an arm around him, press their faces close, and just let him _be_. Let him be upset, and be there for him until he had a handle on it. Times when he seemed to instinctively know that Gus’ mood couldn’t be lifted with jokes and antics, when all he could do was give him a space where they could burrow into each other. And when Shawn was upset, Gus could offer the same. At some point they’d forced themselves to grow out of it. He wishes now they hadn’t, he’s glad to have it back. They’ve never been able to be the kind of men who don’t touch each other, or who only touch under specific Not Gay circumstances, but there was touching and then there was snuggling, there was smushing your nose into your best friend’s hairline and breathing deep with him, there was the way middle school changed everything about the feel of lips against skin even if you didn’t want it to.

Gus tugs gently at Shawn’s hand, until Shawn arranges himself so that Gus can pull their hands up to his mouth. Mostly, his lips rest against his own knuckles, but the backs of Shawn’s fingers are there, too. When he breathes out through his nose, he breathes over Shawn, too. 

It’s a long, peaceful moment, until the tent flap is pulled open-- Shawn screams, and then Gus screams, and Shawn is scrambling to get between Gus and the opening of the tent, shovel out in front of himself.

“Hey! Hey, hey!” Lassiter motions for him to sit back down as if he were trying to train a particularly stubborn dog. “No! No! What are you doing with that?”

“Digging a latrine,” Shawn rolls his eyes. “You gave me a heart attack! What’s this-- what-- Did you get him already? Where is he?”

“No. I got radioed by the rangers’ station, they received a message that the jeep they were sending up had to stop for a hiker in distress, and then that message was cut off, but there was… there was a scream. We are operating under the assumption that your Fred Harper has taken out a forest ranger.”

“WHAT?”

“Oh, _hell_ no!”

“So, under the circumstances… I will be escorting you to the station on foot.”

Shawn looks at Lassiter. He looks at Gus. He looks at the shovel in his hand. “I have an idea.”

It takes a lot more digging than Shawn remembers from any youthful attempts, and Lassiter had loudly protested the dismantling of his tent, and had ultimately disallowed the use of sharpened stakes-- though Shawn could see it in his eyes that he was tempted to see where Shawn was going on that one-- but with Lassiter standing by with a gun drawn, at least he never had to worry about being interrupted by Fred while still in the process of crafting a pit trap. He carefully scatters dirt and pine needles back over the folded canvas tarp covering the hole in the trail, and once he’s satisfied it looks natural, he returns to where Gus is hiding in the underbrush, Lassiter following suit. While Shawn and Gus have their tete-a-tete, he poises himself to rush out and take Harper into custody should he appear.

“So what’s your plan here, Shawn? Because the odds that he’s going to come down this particular trail and fall in a pit? I’m not liking that.”

“Well, no, if you want to trap a tiger, you have to use bait.”

“If you think I’m going to stand out there in the open being all conspicuous until a murderer shows up to try and murder me, then you _must_ be out of your _damn mind_.”

“You’re not,” Shawn shakes his head, taking hold of Gus’ shoulders. “I am. It’s my fault he’s even after you, I’m bait. You… just stay right here and don’t make a sound, and it’s going to be fine.”

“Shawn--”

“Trust me.”

“He has bear mace!”

“Well that’s ridiculous, Gus, I’m clearly an otter.”

“Shawn, I need you to be serious right now, because--”

“I am. I am being… so serious. I can draw him out and then once he’s down Lassie is going to jump in and take him into custody, and I’m scared but I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it was going to turn out fine. And I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t ask you to take any kind of a risk that you don’t have to take. Because I wouldn’t ever want to see anything happen to you. Because I meant what I said, Gus, I’m not sorry, not for a minute of the time we spend together, and you are sweet, and patient, and strong, and I will never not love the first, last, best partner in private detecting a guy could ever have. And all our lives you have cleaned up so many messes I have dragged you through, and I should be sorry for that, but all I want right now is to catch this killer and keep you safe because I want you to keep cleaning up my messes, and I mean that in the least selfish way possible, which is still pretty selfish, but what I’m trying to say is I am never going to learn how to do my taxes, Burton Guster, because if the day ever comes that you aren’t doing them for me, I don’t know if I can even live in that world. And I’m in love with you. In case that wasn’t getting painfully obvious.”

Gus shakes his head, just slightly, his expression soft, mouth open and waiting for an answer that won’t come even as he holds tight to Shawn. There are so many things he could say, that he thought he was never going to say, that he had been afraid to even think about saying for so long, and now that Shawn has started that ball rolling, he doesn’t know how to say it. His hands flex at Shawn’s waist, gripping his shirt, knowing he can’t just hold him in place, unable to let him go. 

None of it is the answer Shawn is looking for, but all of it is enough for him to chance leaning in-- hesitating, until he feels enough of a sway in to meet him that he feels comfortable taking that kiss. He’s had kisses that could be generously described as ‘fireworks’, and some he might describe as being very vaguely like a roller coaster, and even a couple that felt like the kind of moment in a movie where the violins swell. Kissing Gus is like none of those things. Kissing Gus is like rambling for years between jobs and couches and beds and people who don’t and can’t want you long-term, and then finally coming home to the place where you belong, it’s like walking through a door and dropping your bags and smelling something like coffee or fresh bread, because someone has cared enough to wait for you, even if you took long enough getting there. 

“Please, Shawn…” Gus murmurs, soft and warm and his lips are so close they brush against Shawn’s, and this is neither the time nor the place, but Shawn is very interested in hearing whatever this ‘please’ might belong to. “Not in front of the Klingons.”

Okay, so that wasn’t _exactly_ what Shawn was hoping to hear, but the slightly dazed and honeyed tone is nice.

“Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam,” Lassiter says. 

Shawn doesn’t mean to be petty so soon after what was a very nice moment, but he really doesn’t like Lassiter receiving an awed and appreciative look that really ought to be his just now. 

“Did you just--” Gus begins.

“We will never speak of this again. Any of it.”

Shawn starts to pull away, but Gus catches him, returning his attention to exactly where Shawn thinks it belongs, and not on Lassiter. 

“Shawn, wait-- I mean… just…”

“Pluto?”

“That’s messed up, right?”

Shawn smiles, one hand lifting to Gus’ cheek. “Oh, totally. Now whatever you do, stay hidden, stay quiet, until we take this sucker down.”

Gus nods, and releases Shawn with some reluctance. Shawn positions himself next to the pit trap, and shuffles around a while, scanning the area, listening. 

“GUS?” He calls. “GUS, I LOST YOU! BABY, FOLLOW THE SOUND OF MY VOICE, I THINK I FOUND THE TRAIL WE CAN TAKE TO GET TO THE RANGERS’ STATION! GUS? HONEYBUNCH? HONEYBUNCHES OF GUS? COME ON, BRING THAT CUTE TUSHIE OVER THIS WAY, CAN YOU HEAR ME? IF WE CAN FIND THE RANGERS’ STATION, YOU CAN TELL THEM WHAT YOU TOLD ME, ABOUT THE MURDERS! GUS, I’M JUST GOING TO SING WHEN IN ROME’S ‘THE PROMISE’ AND YOU CAN FOLLOW THE SOUND OF OUR SONG TO FIND ME!”

Gus summons all of his willpower not to correct Shawn on the very important issue that is what their song would be, because he knows Shawn knows it’s Berlin’s ‘Take My Breath Away’, and if they had a top three then that would be followed by Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’ and Asia’s ‘Heat of the Moment’, and When in Rome wouldn’t break the top five. Not that Gus has two separate playlists meticulously crafted in his iTunes library, one featuring his and Shawn’s top twenty songs as best friends, and the other made up of hypothetical songs that could be Their Song if they were a couple, because that would be weird. And also a couple of songs show up in both playlists. And he _knows_ Shawn knows it’s ‘Take My Breath Away’.

Shawn gets to the ‘gotta tell you, need to tell you’ before Fred ‘Gabrielle’ Harper appears. What Shawn had not taken into account, in the excitement of getting to build the tiger trap his father once told him would never be a useful life skill, is that Fred might not come from the right direction to pass over the trap. And in fact even if he had build pits to either side of himself, it wouldn’t have helped him given Fred winds up coming straight out of the woods to the opposite side of the trail from where Lassiter and Gus are hiding, which is not the direction Shawn is facing. 

It’s embarrassing, is what it is, to have a fifty year old pharmaceuticals rep with restless leg syndrome and a fondness for English Breakfast tea get the drop on you, get an arm around your neck, and hold you at knife point.

As much as it is a relief to have Lassiter as backup, it’s just so embarrassing to have him witness it that Shawn is kind of half wishing he was dealing with this problem on his own, but then, he’s survived embarrassment before.

“Keep talking,” Fred says, but he doesn’t get the chance to offer further instructions.

“DROP THE KNIFE!” Lassiter emerges even more dramatically from his side of the trail. An avenging angel who will absolutely hold this over Shawn later… but the rescue is looking a little more worth the pain.

“You drop the gun! I’ll do it, I swear!” He shouts, but his voice shakes. 

“Okay. Slice him open, and _then_ I will shoot you. Frankly, he’s a pain in my ass, see if I care.”

“Oh, Lassie, that’s cold,” Shawn complains. “Look, Gabby Hayes, the jig is up. Nothing good is going to happen for you if you kill me. You have to ask yourself, do you want Cheryl visiting you in prison… or the morgue?”

That does the trick. Defeated, Fred drops the knife, raises his hands, and shifts his weight-- to Shawn’s barely contained delight-- to step around to the side. The tarp gives way beneath him with a triumphant thud and an indignant squawk.

To be fair, it is not a very deep pit trap, because digging is hard, and without the spikes at the bottom, it’s more a mild inconvenience than anything else, but it still feels so good.

“Ha! Suck it!” Shawn jumps up and down, pointing, as Lassiter moves in to help Fred out of the pit and cuff him.

“Oh, that’s what I’m talking about!” Gus emerges from the bushes. “Oh, that’s right, we set you up. I was there the whole time! How’s it going now?”

“... It’s going,” Fred nods.

“Yeah, that’s what I _thought_ ,” He says, moving to Shawn’s side and taking his arm. “You can keep your murdery murderhands off my man.”

Shawn leans into Gus’ side with a smile. 

They make their way towards the main dirt road, where Juliet meets them. The ranger who’d stopped for Fred before had been maced and given a good thumping, but according to Juliet, he’s alive. The biggest job is ferrying Gus’ workmates down from the campsite, and then dealing with the cars… Juliet gives Shawn and Gus a ride home, as Lassiter not-so-politely declines to share his car with either of them.

Shawn should, he thinks, explain the whole Gus situation to Juliet, who is nice and attractive and a good cop if a bit naive, but who isn’t… well, Gus. Who likes him, he knows she likes him, he’d have to be an idiot to notice all the things he does notice and not know that, but the thing is, their… whole vibe, it’s fun but it’s not… If he kissed her, it would probably be great, honestly, but it wouldn’t be home. And they work together, and he doesn’t owe her a lengthy explanation, but he owes her a heads up.

He doesn’t know _how_ to navigate that heads up, but there are worse conversations to have. He starts by electing to sit in the back seat with Gus, instead of either of them taking the passenger’s seat in her car. He reaches over to take Gus’ hand across the middle seat, an action that didn’t so much become comfortable as begin there. 

She gives them a look, as the three of them get out of the car, he gives her a nod.

“Okay, well, that’s an important lesson for me, then…” She says, and he has to wince at how damn _forlorn_ she goes.

“Jules-- I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you, before all this actually… happened, but--”

“Oh-- oh, no, I mean about betting on coworkers’ love lives. I owe someone five bucks over this, that’s all. I mean-- wow, no. I mean you’re _cute_ , but _no_.”

Huh. Well, important lessons all around, then.

“Great! Great, great talk.”

“I mean, of course I like you as a _friend_ ,” She clarifies. 

“Yes, right, as do I, as a friend, to you.”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Gus asks, just slightly huffy at being left out of even the most awkward conversation in the world.

“Gus, you’re my soulmate.”

“Aw, Gus.” Juliet moves to hug him. It’s a long hug, which means it’s Shawn’s turn to get jealous, and he never really considered himself the jealous type before.

He clears his throat, and Juliet motions him in with one hand, so he wraps his arms around both of them.

“I’m really sorry about all the homicides on your weekend…” She says, somewhere between Gus’ shoulder and Shawn’s.

“It’s okay. Homicides happen. Sorry for getting you in hot water with Lassie by crashing _his_ weekend.”

“That’s okay. Hot water with Carlton _definitely_ happens. He’ll get over it. So how did everything happen, exactly?”

They reserve the full story for a restaurant that serves breakfast for dinner. Shawn declares a yearning for waffles on the way in, and feels a curious new warmth when Gus takes that information and orders for him. He’s not sure if Gus feels the same way when he turns around and orders the crepes for him, but it’s not like he couldn’t track exactly which menu items Gus’ eye kept turning and returning to.

“See, now I feel… really bad about betting against you being a couple,” Juliet sighs.

“Do you want us to order for you?”

“No, I just want the eggs benedict. But thanks.”

She’s a receptive audience to the tale of murder, romance, and teambuilding activities that they spin for her. Without the urgency with which they’d been operating catching Lassiter up, they’re free to go off on tangents or slip in unimportant details for color. And free, with very little coaxing, to fill in the story of how they’d gone from a fake relationship to a real one.

“Wait, wait, wait, you mean to tell me this actually just happened this weekend?”

“On this plane, yes. In a realer and more metaphysical sense, of course, Gus and I have been quantumly entangled for years.”

“That’s not what quantum entanglement means, Shawn.”

“Mm, see? See? He’s perfect. Made for me. You can tell by the way he corrects me on things that I have actually heard both ways. It just took us a while to get here. She has a point, though, I mean… every time I’ve ever had a girlfriend, you hit the sugar pretty hard.”

“I handle it better than _you_ do.”

“Mm, the bunnies… true. Well, we’re here now.”

“I feel like it’s almost better if I don’t ask what you’re talking about. I think I’d understand it less,” Juliet says.

After Juliet, there’s really only one thing left to do. Well, actually, there’s a lot of things left to do. Going home to Gus’ place together, indulging in actual hot showers and the comforts of Gus’ bed, which could easily become their bed. Maybe it’s a little soon for that kind of thinking, but it’s them. Waiting seems pointless when they already know how to live with each other just as well as they know how to live apart. Scratch that, Shawn knows how to live with Gus so much better than he knows how to live on his own.

He puts off the last thing he feels he really has to do a couple of days, until he can’t justify it any longer. He finds Henry out working on his boat, and drops down to sit a couple of feet away.

“To what do I owe this visit?”

“Can’t I just want to hang out and do boat stuff with my old ma--okay, yeah, you got me, I didn’t come to do boat stuff. I, um… I don’t really know how to tell you this. I mean… I’ve never… The only thing I’ve ever had to tell you in my life was that I didn’t want to be a cop, and now… I mean that’s the same, I just mean… I don’t know how to tell you something that’s kind of important. About me.”

Henry pauses, looking up. “You doing okay? This isn’t… medical?”

“No, no! No, I’m actually, I’m good. I’m really good. I’m, uh… I’m moving in with Gus. Not-- please don’t, because-- Not because of money. I don’t need money, or want money, or want to move back in with _you_ , this isn’t a rent issue, it’s… I’m moving in with Gus for reasons. And… the reasons are… that Gus is great, and I am in love with him.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” 

“What do you want me to say, Shawn? That it’s not okay? I’ve known you were… I don’t know, bisexual, maybe, or _something_ , since you were a kid.”

“... Of course you did. What gave me away? Was it the equal distribution of men and women with too much hairspray and too little shirt in the posters on my walls? Was it the Donna Summer album? Please tell me it wasn’t something really cliche like a bodybuilding magazine under the mattress,” Shawn says, though he doesn’t think he actually did that one-- not his type.

“It was an underwear catalog, but no. It wasn’t one thing, it wasn’t about the music you listened to or the movies you watched, it was just… you. And you had a crush on a boy, and you were… you were just you, Shawn, and I had to make a choice about whether or not I was going to let it bother me, and I couldn’t.”

“And you just… you never said anything? You let me think I couldn’t talk to you about it?”

“I want you to name one single thing _I_ could have said to _you_ growing up that you would have wanted to listen to. I mean, when my old man gave me the talk it was just ‘don’t get a girl pregnant if you’re not ready to marry her’, I didn’t have any advice for dealing with boys. And I didn’t have a whole lot of advice for dealing with girls.”

“Okay, good point.”

“I mean, why did you think I started telling you to leave your door open when you had Gus over, around middle school?”

“I don’t know! Like, maybe you didn’t want us to try pot and devil worship, it was a wild time!”

“... Shawn. Honestly,” Henry stares at him. “You and _Gus_? I was not worried about _Gus_ smoking pot or trying devil worship. Look… I’m glad you told me. I’m glad you’re making it work and you’re serious. I’m glad it’s Gus.”

That, he thinks, is what he needed to hear. Maybe not as a kid, when there was absolutely nothing his father could have said that wouldn’t have been mortifying to them both, but here and now.

“Well… you should come over sometime. For… traditional manly activities and beer. Whatever normal fathers and sons and sons-in-law do,” Shawn says, getting to his feet. 

“Sure. I’ll call Gus to schedule that.”

“He’s the responsible one.”

Shawn ambles off, relieved to have checked that one last thing off, less painfully than he’d anticipated. Henry goes back to working on the boat… but he goes back to working on the boat with just a little bit more of a smile than he’d had before.


End file.
